I have somehow never needed a BEGIN block (or any of perl's named blocks) before, so it never would have occurred to me to even search there

In case it further helps your general understanding of BEGIN blocks in Perl, I've listed a few more references below:

• use (perldoc)
• perlfaq8 (perldoc) - What's the difference between require and use?
• BEGIN, UNITCHECK, CHECK, INIT and END (perldoc)
• BEGIN block - running code during compilation (Perl Maven)

• How to write a require statement in perl to get the export tags from a module (SO)
• What is the role of the BEGIN block in Perl (SO) - typical usage is to make changes that affect subsequent compilation

• BEGIN blocks in awk - historically, Perl borrowed BEGIN blocks from the earlier AWK programming language, as noted in reply by perlfan

Note that a use Module qw/a b c/; statement is equivalent to:

BEGIN {
   require Module;
   Module->import(qw/a b c/);
}

while sub name {...} is equivalent to:

BEGIN {
   *name = sub {...};
}

update: but see response by ikegami for how to name the BEGIN block anon sub (useful in traces).

PM References Added Later

• Understanding use and require fully (2008)
• "use" vs "require" (2006)
• BEGIN block (2015)

• create an anonymous hash using "map" (2024)
• Use of BEGIN block (2025)

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