Yep, I've seen that too. The issues is, I think, that what you get from the tied hash is a reference to the method in the tied object, and that doesn't get executed in context of the array dereference, but it does in the context of assigning the value to a variable. Why this would be, I don't know.
-I went outside... and then I came back in!!!!
Comment on Re: error dereferencing array in a tied hash
Know of any workarounds that don't involve changing all
the outside hash access code? The idea of the tie is to
leave that code alone while adding something hidden. I've
tried lots of things with no luck. Strange that it only
happens with some ties, and when it does, it does it
consistently with that tie. That leads me to believe there's something I can do in the tie code to make it work.
What, I don't know ...