Neither BEGIN nor INIT blocks evaluate to anything. The way to do what you want is probably to involve a do block and a variable: 
sleep 4;
print "timespan: " . (time - do {
  my $btime;
  BEGIN {$btime=time}
  $btime
}); # should show 4

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In reply to Re: Can / Do BEGIN blocks return their evaluated content? by Roy Johnson
in thread Can / Do BEGIN blocks return their evaluated content? by dynamo

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