Re^2: Reference is experimental

I don't believe that postfix-deref was a replacement for shifting an aref... it's just a different way to dereference references.

The problem here is that $tmp[0] is a scalar, and back in the days where shifting refs was experimental, it assumed that anything not an array should be a reference to one.

As you've said, that experiment ended, and in 5.24.0+, we now get something a little different and descriptive (albeit still with an experimental warning):

perl -wMstrict -E 'my @a=(1); shift $a[0]'
Experimental shift on scalar is now forbidden at -e line 1, at EOF
Execution of -e aborted due to compilation errors.
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Re^3: Reference is experimental by ikegami (Patriarch) on Oct 20, 2016 at 18:26 UTC
The experimental feature was abandoned for the operators that work on both hashes and arrays (`keys`, `values` and `each`) because the design couldn't work properly for all array-like and hash-like things. The same problem didn't exist for the operators that work solely on arrays (`push`, `pop`, `shift`, `unshift` and `splice`(?)), but the feature was also abandoned for them to avoid a lack of symmetry with `keys`, `values` and `each`. However, it's worth noting that it was mentioned that newly-created postderef lessened the need for these.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^4: Reference is experimental by Anonymous Monk on Oct 20, 2016 at 20:34 UTC
However, it's worth noting that it was mentioned that newly-created postderef lessened the need for these. It would be interesting to ask whether there was ever any real requirement for either? Or was this just a flight of fancy by some dev overeager to leave fingerprints on the codebase, approved on the basis of who was proposing it, rather than a proper technical assessment of the need for, utility of, and "fit" of the proposal.	[reply]