to illustrate what I meant, *s and &s are not "bare" because of the sigils.

But a bare word s is supposed to start a s/// resp. s()() or s{}{} or ... depending on whatever character follows (even with empty space in between)

This makes parsing particularly difficult.

use strict;
use warnings;


*s = sub { warn "s called" };

&s();

#  --- not working
# sub s {
#   warn "s called"
# }

# --- neither
#   s();
[download]

s called at c:/tmp/pm/s_sub.pl line 11.
[download]

This problem should apply for all perlop#Quote-and-Quote-like-Operators .