It's not quite as cut and dried as that. The prototyping makes no difference if the subroutine is not introduced before it is first referenced, you will still get the "Bareword" error when using strict (and if you are not using strict the sub name will be taken as a string.) If you define the subroutine first or make a forward declaration (e.g sub FOO;) then you can use it without the parentheses regardless of the prototyping.

/J\