Re: Anonymous subroutines (why and what for)

[LanX]

There are various possible reasons

In general anonymous subs ...

• don't pollute the namespace - i.e. block a name (sic) in a package
• are private * and scoped when assigned to my var
• don't need to be \& referenced before being passed around ²
• are "created" on the fly at run time °
• can be generated multiple times with binding to different closure vars
• can be nested *
• can easily be used as "lambdas" with map-like functions(&) ³
• (add more techniques from functional programming)
• (add more techniques from metaprogramming)
• ...

Without more details it's hard to tell, why you saw, what you saw.

°) well "available", they are only compiled once at compile time, but their time window/life span is dynamic

*) even in older Perl versions

²) e.g. as callbacks

³) like in List::Util et.al.

Update

Disclaimer: The listed points are not exclusive and have overlaps. Neither do I expect them to be exhaustive and to cover all cases.