perlglossary states

anonymous

Used to describe a referent that is not directly accessible through a named variable. Such a referent must be indirectly accessible through at least one hard reference. When the last hard reference goes away, the anonymous referent is destroyed without pity.

But I just recalled that Perl tends to use the label "__ANON__" for subs which were not bound to a package at creation time (i.e. created the usual way with sub name {} )

  DB<22> use Carp qw/confess/

  DB<23> $inner = sub { confess "INNER" }

  DB<24> sub outer { $inner->() }

  DB<25> outer()
INNER at (eval 32)[C:/Perl_524/lib/perl5db.pl:737] line 2.
        main::__ANON__[(eval 32)[C:/Perl_524/lib/perl5db.pl:737]:2]() 
+called at (eval 33)[C:/Perl_524/lib/perl5db.pl:737] line 2
        main::outer() called at (eval 34)[C:/Perl_524/lib/perl5db.pl:7
+37] line 2
... #shortened 
outer();
... #shortened
  DB<26> *inner = $inner

  DB<27> inner()
INNER at (eval 32)[C:/Perl_524/lib/perl5db.pl:737] line 2.
        main::__ANON__[(eval 32)[C:/Perl_524/lib/perl5db.pl:737]:2]() 
+called at (eval 36)[C:/Perl_524/lib/perl5db.pl:737] line 2
... #shortened
inner();
... #shortened
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I think this is a confusing terminology which might have made sense in the time of Perl4.

But I see your point now.

PS: Would be interesting to know if lexical subs are handled correctly here. (UPDATE: yes they are)