You're right. Not only that $_[0] is an alias, and the original implementation is redundant because of it, but also that it could be implemented much more concisely, f.ex. sub head($) { $_[0] =~ s/^(\S+)\s+// and $1 }

However, with these changes, the very point of the post would be missed. There was a reason that I put it in "obfuscation" - because "head $msg" is trivial and "head \ $msg" is fun :)