This has nothing to do with the original discussion, which I was responding in context to. This has nothing to do with the fact that in the example you gave, I said it didn't need a BEGIN block.. which it doesn't. Then when you start wrapping code around it you start saying that it does. Well, yeah.. when you make it need it, it needs it. Your original example doesn't.

You could put all your initializations in BEGIN and all your function calls in END for all I care.. your first snippet still doesn't need a BEGIN.

Cheers,
KM