Uh, write a Perl subroutine that works exactly like pop() without (1) taking a (@) prototype signature, and (2) expecting that $_[0] is an lvalue array reference. I'd like to see the code.
Oops. I don't think I thought about what I was writing, and I certainly don't seem to have read what you wrote. However, from my (probably limited) understanding of @, \@ whatever prototyping, the context is relatively limited and has to emulate a function call. You can't use any of this for method calls, for example. I see what you mean, though.