I don't know "why", but I just note incidentally that you can also do that with the coderef slot:

$ perl -Mstrict -Mwarnings -le'*_=sub{"hi"}; print &_'
hi

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In reply to Re: Does %_ have a function or is it just for fun? by ForgotPasswordAgain
in thread Does %_ have a function or is it just for fun? by larard

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