http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=863793


in reply to Re: Script/module formatting gotcha
in thread Script/module formatting gotcha

The problem is not that the construction as such is problematic, but that the format of the source-code makes it had to see immediately what is happening (at least that is how I understand the question).

And I am afreid that neither perltidy nor perlcritic would have helped a lot here.

But perl -MO=Deparse <your script> would have.