Junk Your Old Prototypes

• Perl 5 prototypes have never really been all that useful

  • Can tell you if you've provided the wrong number of mandatory arguments

  • Very limited type-checking

    • All scalars look alike, whether strings, numbers or references

    • Won't warn if mandatory argument is undefined

  • Does not preclude need to unpack @INC

  • Does not declare named variables for use within subroutine, as signatures would

• Were they introduced merely to shut up people coming from other languages who expected them?