I take your point, however -- there are indeed exceptions. I think "english language" unary operators might be a whole class of exceptions since they parse (to us) as English rather than code.

By the way, why is '->' a binary operator? From perldoc:

"->" is an infix dereference operator, just as it is in C and C++. If the right side is either a ..., {...}, or a (...) subscript, then the left side must be either a hard or symbolic reference to an array, a hash, or a subroutine respectively. (Or technically speaking, a location capable of holding a hard reference, if it's an array or hash reference being used for assignment.) See perlreftut and perlref. Otherwise, the right side is a method name or a simple scalar variable containing either the method name or a subroutine reference, and the left side must be either an object (a blessed reference) or a class name (that is, a package name). See perlobj.

Seems like dereferencing is dereferencing is dereferencing, no RHS required. Is there an association going on as well?

Matt