I may have overheard most of a conversation stating that print is actually done as an indirect function call on a bareword (with magic to allow it to work)

then again, i could have made it all up...

the prin { $_->[0] } @foo we're seeing here is a block returning a file handle for print to write to (as perldoc says), so it's not a de-reference as *{ ... } would suggest

Update: added some actual information