Perl: how come moving that line makes a difference?

[Shaul Karl]

  This is a question about Perl. It involves a 924 lines utility,
dupload.


The problem:

    $ dupload --no -c myApp
    dupload fatal error: Need host to upload to.  (See --to option or the
    default_host configuration variable)
     at /usr/bin/dupload line 142
 
    $cat -n dupload|grep 142
       142  $host or fatal("Need host to upload to.  (See --to option or the
    default_host configuration variable)\n");
   

The question:

  How come that in the following piece of code, moving the 4th line 
($host = ...) to be after the 9th line (configure ...) solves the error
from above? What side effects would this move have? 
  I guess that I would be better searching for the word configure in the
utility. Here it is:

        
    $debug = $::opt_debug || $debug;
    $keep = $::opt_keep || $keep;
    $configfile = $::opt_configfile || $configfile;
    $host = $::opt_to || $config::default_host;
    $force = $::opt_force || $force;
    $nomail = $::opt_nomail || 0;
    $quiet = $::opt_quiet;
      
    configure("./dupload.conf") if $configfile;
      
    # only info or version?
    info($host), exit 0 if $::opt_print;


  The appearances of the word configure in the utility are as  follows:

    ### Prototypes
    sub configure(@);    # reads the config file(s)
    .
    .
    .
    ### Main
    configure(
        "/etc/dupload.conf",
        $ENV{HOME} && "$ENV{HOME}/.dupload.conf");
    
    $Getopt::Long::ignorecase = 0;
    GetOptions qw(
        debug:i 
        help
        force keep configfile no nomail noarchive
        mailonly
        to=s print 
           quiet Version version
    ) or fatal("Bad Options\n");
    .
    .
    .
    configure("./dupload.conf") if $configfile;
    .
    .
    .
    ### Read the configuration
    sub configure(@) {
        my @conffiles = @_;
        my @read = ();
        foreach (@conffiles) { 
                -r or next;
                -s or next;
                do $_ or fatal("[EMAIL PROTECTED]");
                push @read, $_;
        }
        @read or fatal("No configuration files\n");
    }


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