While everyone's talking about "9 times out of 10," my first guess at reading that other node was that the poster was familiar with the Java idiom, and just wanted to do the same thing in Perl. Of course, a six-line bit of cargo-cult chicanery isn't a useful idiom, but the question was interesting anyway. The "bigger question" here is that idioms are just that: they make sense in one language, but don't translate as well. "You're pulling my leg" means nothing without cultural context. import java.util.*; is similarly bizarre to people wearing Perl-colored glasses.