Seems you do not need either push or anonymous arrays to see the behaviour with 5.8.6:

c:\test>perl -Mstrict -MData::Dump=pp 
-wle"my @r=1..10; @{ @r }='a'..'c'; pp \@r"
["a", "b", "c"]
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@{ @r } seems to function exactly the same as either @r alone (or @{ \@r }). Which is somewhat bizarre.

But not so with 5.10

c:\test>\perl510\bin\perl -MData::Dump=pp 
-wle"my @r=1..10; @{ @r }='a'..'c'; pp \@r"
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]


c:\test>\perl510\bin\perl -Mstrict -MData::Dump=pp 
-wle"my @r=1..10; @{ @r }='a'..'c'; pp \@r"
Can't use string ("10") as an ARRAY ref while "strict refs" in use at 
+-e line 1.
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