Make sure you know what you are doing when adding & to the front of a function call. It can have unintended consequences if you do not understand the difference. Here is the relevant section from perlsub that briefly explains the difference:

       To call subroutines:

           NAME(LIST);    # & is optional with parentheses.
           NAME LIST;     # Parentheses optional if predeclared/imported.
           &NAME(LIST);   # Circumvent prototypes.
           &NAME;         # Makes current @_ visible to called subroutine.
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