Some years, months ago I found here on PerlMonks that parentheses are not needed around qw// to create a list for for consumption. Today, I found a failure case listed after working versions ...

#!/usr/local/bin/perl

use strict; use warnings;

#  Working versions.
warn $_ for qw/ p / ;

for my $var qw/ p / { warn $var }

for ( qw/ p / ) { warn $_ }

#  Fails at compile time.
#  This is commented just to have the program be compiled and get erro
+r via
#  eval.
#for qw/ p / { warn $_ };

my $code = eval "for qw/ p / { warn $_ } " ;
warn "code: $code  error: $@";

__END__

Error message produced ...

   Missing $ on loop variable at -e line 1 (#1)

... diagnostics module adds ...

    (F) Apparently you've been programming in csh too much.  Variables
+ are
        always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, whe
+re it can
        vary from one line to the next.
[download]

... seems the failing loop is being parsed as for p ( ... ) { ... }.

Perl versions tested were 5.8.7 i686-linux-thread-multi & 5.10.0 i686-linux.

Any comments on if the parentheses lacking versions work by fluke? Or, if the failure is by fluke?

Belatedly added the link to support my fuzzy memory, removed comp.lang.perl.misc reference. Other related discussions ...

• Surpised by foreach iterator limitation. PerlMonks, 2003.
• foreach loop + qw + bareword parser bug. Perl5 Porters, 2005.
• New(?) for qw(...) error, part two. London.pm, 2007.