It's all changing the context you are in, you can reference an element as @foo[$i] or $foo[$i], it's just an array slice of one (Ie. array context) versus a single element (scalar context). Eg. 

my @abcd = (1,2,3);
print "@abcd" . "\n";
$abcd[0] = 4;
@abcd[1] = 5;
print "@abcd" . "\n";
$abcd[0] = (4, 5, 6);
@abcd[1] = (4, 5, 6);
print "@abcd" . "\n";
print @abcd . "\n";
__DATA__
1 2 3
4 5 3
6 4 3
3

[download]

As you can see the simple assignments are the same, it's only when you get to a point where the context matters that it changes.

--
James Antill

In reply to Symbols are about denoting context by nevyn
in thread The philosophy behind element reference syntax by jcoxen

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