Maybe the whole confusion started, when variables for filehandles were introduced.
You probably mean "since we can use references to filehandles instead of filehandles"? That has been possible since 5.000. (Before that, Perl did not have references).

But it was only that filehandle references autovivified that they became popular (5.6.0).

In reply to Re^5: Operator precedence of unary plus (Bug or Feature) by JavaFan
in thread Operator precedence of unary plus (Bug or Feature) by LanX

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