Question

could someone tell me what this does?

my ($pkg, @elements) = @_;
my $me = "${pkg}::new()";

Answer 1

my ($pkg, @elements) = @_;

Is commonly seen here:

sub perl_func () {
  my ($pkg, @elements) = @_;   
}

It’s equivalent to the following in PHP:

list ($pkg, $elements) = $an_array;

In the above context it is Perl’s weird way of implementing function parameters, do imagine it looks like this:

sub perl_func ($pkg, @elements) {
}

Finally this:

my $me = "${pkg}::new()";

Is just a string, consider:

my $pkg = "rhubarb";

Then, $me = "rhubarb::new()"