... Instead, I get "4".

Not that it matters much in the overall picture of things... :)  but I do get "four" in $first, not "4" — as in

my $first = qw( one two three four );        # "four"
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as opposed to

my $first = @{[qw( one two three four )]};   # 4
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Apart from that, I'd just ditch the prototypes, or put them in a comment if you really want them for documentation purposes...