*No need to wait for Perl 6* Absolutely :) use autobox::Core; # or perl5i::2 [1....

JadeNB · on Oct 19, 2011

I thought `Whatever` was a joke, and had to go look it up on CPAN (http://search.cpan.org/~asg/Whatever-0.21/lib/Whatever.pm). Not to belabour a joke, but the examples there suggest that the map should be

    map( $* ** 2 )

not

    map( &_ ** 2 )

draegtun · on Oct 20, 2011

No it's quite a serious & well written module. Hopefully it will become part of perl5i - https://metacpan.org/module/perl5i

  &_ is an explicit $_   You use $* or &* when you need to check $_[0] first.
  
  So &_ is more correct with general map but $* (and &*) will work also in 
  this autobox example (in fact i had used it in my first edit but preferred 
  aesthetics of &_ especially with previous usage of $* only being deprecated 
  in 5.10).

NB. Above in code just for aesthetics!