Maybe, maybe not. Sometimes, it's rather obvious what the arguments are. Sometimes, all the arguments play the same role. And sometimes, it would be just bloody annoying to use named parameters all the time. Do you really want to write:

    my $substr = substr(subject => $str, first_char => 5, length => 3,
+ replacement => "bar");
    my @parts = split(subject => $str, pattern => qr/foo/, max_parts =
+> 7, keep_trailing_empty_fields => 1);
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? I'm not sure whether it's more readable. Or whether it's harder to remember that a negative third argument to split indicates trailing empty fields should be preserved than it is to remember the name of the flag.