The 'bad' syntax works but gets a single element 'slice' and is in array (not scalar) context which may behave in slightly unexpected ways for which I can not generate a one line example.

I don't think this really has anything to do with slices. Nor is it a matter of context. It's just a syntactical freak of Perl nature... Frankenstyle.

Some examples:

perl -le '@foo = qw( f o o ); print @foo->[0]'     # Frankenstyle
perl -le '@foo = qw( f o o ); print @foo->[0,1,2]' # Frankenslice?
perl -le '@foo = qw( f o o ); print @foo[0,1,2]'   # Working slice.

#### And a demo of context...
perl -wle 'sub c {print wantarray ? "list" : "scalar" } my @foo; @foo 
+= c;'
perl -wle 'sub c {print wantarray ? "list" : "scalar" } my @foo; $foo[
+0] = c;'
perl -wle 'sub c {print wantarray ? "list" : "scalar" } my @foo; @foo[
+0,1] = c;'
# And Frankenstyle....
perl -wle 'sub c {print wantarray ? "list" : "scalar" } my @foo; @foo-
+>[0] = c;'
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-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";