Hello QM,

Another — possibly heretical? — option is to make max an inline function using a module such as macro:

#! perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use macro max => sub { $_[0] > $_[1] ? $_[0] : $_[1]; };

my $x = $ARGV[0];
my $y = $ARGV[1];
my $m = max($x, $y);

print "max is $m\n";
[download]

Output:

 0:05 >perl 1334_Med.pl 17 12
max is 17

 0:05 >perl -MO=Deparse 1334_Med.pl
Compiling 1334_Med.pl by macro::compiler/0.06 ...
sub Digest::base::new;
sub Digest::base::clone;
sub Digest::base::add;
sub Digest::base::digest;
use macro ('max', sub {
    use warnings;
    use strict;
    $_[0] > $_[1] ? $_[0] : $_[1];
}
);
use warnings;
use strict;
my $x = $ARGV[0];
my $y = $ARGV[1];
my $m = $x > $y ? $x : $y;
print "max is $m\n";
1334_Med.pl syntax OK

 0:05 >
[download]

Hope that helps,