[perl #43068] BEGIN, CHECK, INIT, END should take EXPR in addition to BLOCK

# New Ticket Created by  David Nicol 
# Please include the string:  [perl #43068]
# in the subject line of all future correspondence about this issue. 
# <URL: http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Ticket/Display.html?id=43068 >




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Occasionally the fact that there is an implied block
around a C<use> statement creates an unwanted side effect
which is that lexical variable declarations on the use
line go away:

    use SpecialVariable my $honk => 'ooga';

must be written as 

    my $honk; use SpecialVariable $honk => 'ooga';

This is not a big deal.  However, in discussions of
whether to document this or not, it became apparent that
the situation is considered a bug to fix rather than a
behavior to document more clearly than the implication
that of course this would happen in perlfunc/use's statement
of exact equivalence:

       use Module LIST [...] is exactly equivalent to

             BEGIN { require Module; import Module LIST; }

       except that Module must be a bareword.

Anyway, my proposal is that the situation could be remedied
by loosening the syntax of BEGIN etc. to allow rounds
instead of curlies, which would not create a new lexical pad,
after which C<use> would be modified to have an accurate
documented equivalence of

             BEGIN ( require Module; import Module LIST )


[Please do not change anything below this line]
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Flags:
    category=core
    severity=wishlist
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This perlbug was built using Perl v5.8.8 in the Red Hat build system.

• [perl #43068] BEGIN, CHECK, INIT, END should take EXPR in addition to BLOCK by David Nicol