Perhaps you're asking the wrong question:

perl -MData::Dumper -e "for (1 .. 6){print join('.',%h = (1) x $_) . \
+"\n\";print Dumper(\%h)}"
[download]

results in the already observed behaviour

1
$VAR1 = {
          '1' => undef
        };
1.1
$VAR1 = {
          '1' => 1
        };
1..1
$VAR1 = {
          '1' => undef
        };
1..1.1
$VAR1 = {
          '1' => 1
        };
1..1..1
$VAR1 = {
          '1' => undef
        };
1.1.1..1.1
$VAR1 = {
          '1' => 1
        };
[download]

whereas

perl -MData::Dumper -e "for (1 .. 6){%h=(1) x $_;print join('.',%h ) .
+ \"\n\";print Dumper(\%h)}"
[download]

results in

1.
$VAR1 = {
          '1' => undef
        };
1.1
$VAR1 = {
          '1' => 1
        };
1.
$VAR1 = {
          '1' => undef
        };
1.1
$VAR1 = {
          '1' => 1
        };
1.
$VAR1 = {
          '1' => undef
        };
1.1
$VAR1 = {
          '1' => 1
        }
[download]

which is correct. The question would seem to me to be "why is the 'x' operator propogating to the join?". My guess is that the join is executed for every iteration of the "x", i.e. every time the assignment is triggered %h is updated and the join is executed. (BTW, the undef values are correct and to be expected - see the Dumper results above).

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