The behavior is documented in perlref:
*foo{THING} returns undef if that particular THING hasn't been used yet, except in the case of scalars. *foo{SCALAR} returns a reference to an anonymous scalar if $foo hasn't been used yet. This might change in a future release.
Given that I'm not certain what can really be done about it.

In reply to Re: Misbehaving typeglob by Errto
in thread Misbehaving typeglob by Ovid

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