Hi, thanks for your replies, did not have time to check them up to now! So it seems like I don't need to say "use feature '~~';" at all, that's o.k.

On the other hand, I find the distinction made in the current context between a literal list and an array variable having the same list as value counterintuitive and it is the first time I have tripped over such a distinction in Perl. I never thought of the last element of a list to represent in some way the value of the list, which obviously happens in the smart match context as shown in almut's last example.

I played a little more around with this and found that such a distinction is not made in case we are dealing with array references:

use feature qw / say /;

sub check_match {  
  $n++;
  my $expr = shift;
  say ("$n th match" . (eval($expr) ? ' succeeds' : ' fails'));  
}

@a = (1, 17, 4);
check_match('@a ~~ 17');
check_match('(1, 17, 4) ~~ 17');

$b = [1, 17, 4];
check_match('$b ~~ 17');
check_match('[1, 17, 4] ~~ 17');
[download]

results in the following output:

1 th match succeeds
2 th match fails
3 th match succeeds
4 th match succeeds
[download]

Now I am really puzzled, I would find it more natural if either both of cases 2 and 4 succeeded or both failed.