There's a subroutine call in there, that presumably does the @_ manipulations necessary: 
    unless ($_[$#_] eq 1){
        handle_direntries(handle_direntries_params(@_));
    }

[download]
But since the poster didn't give us the code for handle_direntries_params(), we can only assume that it at least doesn't return @_ unchanged.

In reply to Re^2: uninitialised value in hash reference by mhacker
in thread uninitialised value in hash reference by Maze

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