$ cat t.pl use strict; use warnings; use feature qw(say); use Data::Dumper; say - FOO; say - - BAR; say - + BLUBBER; my %hash = ( - - HHH, 'value', ); print Dumper(\%hash); $ perl t.pl -FOO +BAR -BLUBBER $VAR1 = { '+HHH' => 'value' };