Very interesting meditation here.

One could consider this idiom "The Perl Way" in-a-nutshell, --- expanding the syntax of one fundamental datastruct (hash) to emulate another (MD array), and of course there's several ways to do that...

This flexibility originating in a wish to make the language dance to the pipe of the programmer's needs & expectations, that's what makes it an effective an tool to use. And of course, --hours of fun to learn.

"Ca, ce n'est pas une Pipe"
-- allan