I was convinced I could counter with a rewrite of Chandanperl's code with a typo or two and get it to compile and produce something totally unexpected ( using an empty binary shift <<, a glob *END and the glob of $OFS, *, thrown up against the $var in the example), but I haven't managed it yet.

This was the basis of my argument about the 'ugliness' of the terminator - if it looks enough like a completely different piece of valid perl, and you have to think for a moment to work out how it will be parsed, I call it ugly. Since I can't support my argument with a concrete example, I'll have to let you off - this time! :)

Personally, I usually use a long string as a terminator, since I only have to type it twice.