You are viewing the version of this documentation from Perl 5.18.4. View the latest version
sub NAME BLOCK
sub NAME (PROTO) BLOCK
sub NAME : ATTRS BLOCK
sub NAME (PROTO) : ATTRS BLOCK

This is subroutine definition, not a real function per se. Without a BLOCK it's just a forward declaration. Without a NAME, it's an anonymous function declaration, so does return a value: the CODE ref of the closure just created.

See perlsub and perlref for details about subroutines and references; see attributes and Attribute::Handlers for more information about attributes.