The reason @{ } isn't working, is because it's meant for dereferencing an arrayref. Since (sort { $a <=> $b } keys (%hash)) isn't a reference to an array, it won't work. 
return @{ [ sort { $a <=> $b } keys (%hash) ] }[0];

[download]
should work.

shift operates on an array, not an expression. It does this, because it removes the first element in an array, not simply return it.

Then again, I don't see why return (sort( { $a <=> $b } keys (%hash)))[0] wouldn't work. Haven't tried it though.

[ ar0n ]

In reply to (ar0n) Re: Using shift() on sort() and syntactical funniness by ar0n
in thread Using shift() on sort() and syntactical funniness by deprecated

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