Thanks for the comments - I thought I was the only person who had never seen it before. Someone asked me to take a look at some code, and I admit I did a double-take when I saw: %hash->{thing} I did some research and apparently it used to be all the rage, although any advantages of this syntax escape me. The code is riddled with this stuff. Its removal has been discussed in perl-porters but I could not find any conclusion.