http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=1017703


in reply to Why parens?

If the declaration is not followed by an assignment, it is purely (un)aesthetic. If there is an assignment, the difference is important - the parentheses introduce list context on the rvalue. For example:
$_='....x....x....x...';
my $scalar = /x/g;
my ($list) = /x/g;
print $scalar, "\t", $list, ".\n";

[download]
Output: 
1       x.

[download]
لսႽ† ᥲᥒ⚪⟊Ⴙᘓᖇ Ꮅᘓᖇ⎱ Ⴙᥲ𝇋ƙᘓᖇ

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom