My hunch is that this "works" in the same way that @a->[3] "works", in that an array name is sometimes automatically a reference to that array, even though the language definition would argue otherwise. I've heard it would take deep voodoo to get the current interpreter to have the right info to reject that, so we'll have to wait until perl 6, where it'll be blessed instead of cursed. {grin}

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker