What happens in more detail is that *foo{SCALAR} first looks up the glob *foo, creating it if it doesn't exist. And, for hysterical raisins, just about every glob has a scalar entry automatically created. Then it looks up the SCALAR entry for the glob, and what do you know, there it is. The automatic creation of scalars for every glob has been there a *long* time...I think people are a little scared to change it.