my( $dev, $ino, $mode )= stat( _ );
    return $mode;
}
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I disagree with introducing the $dev and $ino variables here, given that they are not being used. Many languages will throw a "variable is initialized but never used" warning if you do that sort of thing. Apart from that, I feel it makes maintenance harder because the maintenance programmer has more variables to visually digest ... and then perhaps ponder why they are not being used. For similar reasons, I dislike capturing parens in regexes when the captured values are not being used; I find myself visually checking the code for $1, $2, ..., wondering if I've missed something.