And don't worry, I always use () with & so as not to get strange behavior.

& also disables prototypes.

use strict;
use warnings;

sub my_splice(\@$;$@) {
   my ($array, $start, $length, @insert) = @_;
   return splice(@$array, $start, $length, @insert);
}

{
   my @array = qw( a b c );
   splice(@array, 1, 1, qw( d e ));
   print(@array, "\n");   # adec
}

{
   my @array = qw( a b c );
   my_splice(@array, 1, 1, qw( d e ));
   print(@array, "\n");   # adec
}

{
   my @array = qw( a b c );
   &my_splice(@array, 1, 1, qw( d e ));
   print(@array, "\n");  # Can't use string ("a") as an ARRAY ref whil
+e "strict refs" in use at !.pl line 6.
}
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Now, you could argue that prototypes should be avoided, but they are used by many modules.