Chromium:~ lexicon$ perl -l -MO=Deparse little2.pl Unquoted string "unique" may clash with future reserved word at little2.pl line 7. BEGIN { $/ = "\n"; $\ = "\n"; } use warnings; use strict 'refs'; my(@list) = (1, 2, 1); print join(',', (sort unique @list)); print join(',', sort(unique(@list))); sub unique { use warnings; use strict 'refs'; my %new; return grep((!$new{$_}++), @_); } little2.pl syntax OK