But, if I pass sub-expressions to a function, I expect to get references to (temporary) variables containing the results of those sub-expressions.
Then your expectation is wrong. Perl doesn't guarantee this. And if you want a regular language, Perl isn't for you.
It is only in the case of pre-increment expressions (and a few other similar anomalies), that the function receives a reference to the target of the sub-expression, rather than a reference to the result of it.
Yeah. It's called lvalues. Just labelling them anomalies doesn't make them bugs. As I said, if you want a regular language, don't use Perl.
And the clincher that this is a bug
And the ID of your bug report is?
This has no such justification.
The justification is optimization. (Just as the orginal reason for C). Not in keystrokes, but in execution. Here the optimization is that by returning an alias, it saves creating a new SV. If you don't want the alias, create a copy.

In reply to Re^10: Pre vs Post Incrementing variables by JavaFan
in thread Pre vs Post Incrementing variables by SavannahLion

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