Long story short is that a forward declaration doesn't create a glob. You can try this by doing
sub foo;
print ref \$::{foo}; # "SCALAR"
sub bar { 1 };
print ref \$::{bar}; # "GLOB"
sub baz;
print ref \$::{baz}; # "GLOB"
$baz = $baz; # Just to mention the symbol "baz".
As it turns out if you inspect this a bit further the prototype of the subroutine (or "-1" if no prototype) is stored instead of a glob if no glob has been created already. When a symbol with the same name as the forward declaration a glob is created. So when you do
*fn = $::{hello} you actually assign
-1 to
*fn making
*fn aliased to
*{-1}. (
*{something} is just the "safe" way to write
*something for symbols that aren't generally recognized as symbols by Perl and can be used with any sigil, like
&{subname}.)
sub foo;
*{-1} = sub { 'oh' }; # Create a sub called "-1".
print &{-1}(); # "oh"
*bar = $::{foo}; # Really?
print defined &bar; # "1" Huh? So now &bar is defined
# even though &foo isn't?
print bar(); # "oh"
#$foo; # But all this would change if you
# uncommented "$foo;".
Sneaky, eh?
ihb
See perltoc if you don't know which perldoc to read!