Oops! Good catch. I wonder how perl's not bailing out complaining

Because it DWYM instead. The docs say a label is expected, but if a code ref is provided, goto $ref is treated as goto &$ref. Personally, I consider it a bug in the docs (not in Perl or your code) because there's no reason to treat goto $ref as it if were goto "$ref".

$\ = "\n";

sub foo { print @_ }
my $ref = \&foo;

sub { @_=('$ref->(@_)');  $ref->(@_);  }->();
sub { @_=('foo(@_)');     foo(@_);     }->();
sub { @_=('goto $ref');   goto $ref;   }->();
sub { @_=('goto &$ref');  goto &$ref;  }->();
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