[FWP] From the Perl Conference 3.0 Perl quiz (1)

[Vicki Brown <vlb@cfcl.com>]

If you're gonna reply with a spoiler, mark it a spoiler.

If you were there, don't jump in so fast :-)

Here's the code... this is it... just these two lines.
Why doesn't this generate a syntax error?

    } BEGIN {
      @ARGV = <*m*>;

Or, as Jon Orwant said - there were no modules in use, no other lines in
the script. A print statement inserted anywhere, before or after or between
these two lines would print.

What _is_ the single unshown thing that makes this work without a syntax
error? (and how?)

This amused me... (I amuse easily).
If you do put in those print statements,

   print "hello, ";
   } BEGIN {
     @ARGV = <*m*>;
   print "world\n";

what do you get? and why?
-- --
       |\      _,,,---,,_       Vicki Brown <vlb@cfcl.com>
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