That's no multiplication. It's a repition.

From perlop:

Binary ``x'' is the repetition operator. In scalar context or if the left operand is not enclosed in parentheses, it returns a string consisting of the left operand repeated the number of times specified by the right operand. In list context, if the left operand is enclosed in parentheses, it repeats the list.

# print row of dashes    
print '-' x 80;

#tab over
print "\t" x ($tab/8), ' ' x ($tab%8);      

# a list of 80 1's
@ones = (1) x 80;           

# set all elements to 5
@ones = (5) x @ones;
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Update: Fixed formatting