I'm relatively new to Perl and not a programmer by trade so maybe this is just a gap in my education but there's something I don't understand. Why is it necessary to access array and hash elements as scalars? The current syntax seems to make element references a special case. To quote from the perldata manpage...

Scalar values are always named with '$', even when referring to a scal
+ar that is part of an array. It works like the English word ``the''. 
+Thus we have:

    $days               # the simple scalar value "days"
    $days[28]           # the 29th element of array @days
    $days{'Feb'}        # the 'Feb' value from hash %days
    $#days              # the last index of array @days

but entire arrays or array slices are denoted by '@', which works much
+ like the word ``these'' or ``those'':

    @days               # ($days[0], $days[1],... $days[n])
    @days[3,4,5]        # same as @days[3..5]
    @days{'a','c'}      # same as ($days{'a'},$days{'c'})

[download]

From a syntactical standpoint, it seems to me that it would be more consistent to access array elements like so:

@ary[0]

instead of like this:

$ary[0]

The entire array is accessed with @. An array slice is accessed with @. Why not access an array element with @ as well? And the same with hashes?

I've read the perldata manpage and I understand that each element is a scalar. I understand the 'the' vs 'these'/'those' argument but the syntax still trips me up every time. I'm not thinking 'the' $element out of 'these' @elements - I'm thinking 'this' @element out of 'this' @array.

Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum
(I think I think, therefore I think I am)

In reply to The philosophy behind element reference syntax by jcoxen

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