Practical example of "Is Perl code maintainable"

[eyepopslikeamosquito]

Further to Some thoughts around the "is Perl code maintainable" discussion, today I inherited some code written by an external contractor. Here is one of his functions that caught my eye:

sub file_mode {
  my ($file) = @_;
  if( ! -f $file ) {
    return -1;
  }
  my $dummy;
  my $mode;
  ($dummy,$dummy, $mode, $dummy, $dummy, $dummy, $dummy, $dummy, $dumm
+y,
          $dummy, $dummy, $dummy, $dummy) = stat($file);
  return $mode;
}

Maybe he thought he was writing in a very "clear" style, but I had to reach for my sunglasses looking through this code. :-) Assuming that I don't change the (dubious) interface, my instinct would be to write this function as:

sub file_mode {
  -f shift or return -1;
  return (stat(_))[2];
}

Then I thought, maybe a Perl novice would find the original function easier to understand and maintain. I guess it's like writing, you should write to a level appropriate to your audience. What do you think?