Oh I was sure the syntax was ok in both forms.  I&#x27;m guessing it&#x27;s a GLR revision.  It&#x27;s indeed better to to reserve {} for scalar containers.<p>Notice how in Perl 6 you get a nice error message:<p><pre><code>    $ perl6 -e &#x27;my %h = { foo =&gt; &quot;bar&quot; };&#x27;
    Potential difficulties:
        Useless use of hash composer on right side of hash assignment;
        did you mean := instead?
        at -e:1
        ------&gt; my %h = { foo =&gt; &quot;bar&quot; }⏏;</code></pre>