spek@scelia ~/scratch $ perl -le '@_ = qw( a b c ); print( ( shift @_ )[ 0, 0 ] );'
aa
spek@scelia ~/scratch $ perl -le '@_ = qw( a b c ); @A = ( shift @_ )[ 0, 0 ]; print @A'
aa
spek@scelia ~/scratch $ perl -le '@_ = qw( a b c ); @A = ( shift @_ ) x 2; print @A'
aa
spek@scelia ~/scratch $ perl -v

This is perl 5, version 26, subversion 1 (v5.26.1) built for x86_64-linux