Didn't know Ruby (and Perl?) had BEGIN and END... Along with BEGIN & END there is also UNITCHECK, CHECK & INIT in Perl: http://perldoc.perl.org/perlmod.html#BE

Didn't know Ruby (and Perl?) had BEGIN and END... Along with BEGIN & END there is also UNITCHECK, CHECK & INIT in Perl: http://perldoc.perl.org/perlmod.html#BEGIN%2c-UNITCHECK%2c-CHECK%2c-INIT-and-END http://perldoc.perl.org/perlmod.html#BEGIN%2c-UNITCHECK%2c-C... These named blocks are used under the hood in Perl all the time. For eg. foo(); # => bar sub foo { say "bar" } The above works because the last line is interpreted as: BEGIN { *foo = sub { say "bar" } } And so is compiled before the foo() line is reached/run. PS. Perl6 goes even further and calls them Phasers: http://feather.perl6.nl/syn/S04.html#Phasers http://feather.perl6.nl/syn/S04.html#Phasers