But that's a whole character longer . . . :) (But then again the square version requires hitting shift one less time so it has that going for it :)

print +(sort @array)[0];
print [sort @array]->[0];
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Possibly could an interesting benchmark if anyone's so inclined: does slicing the value off the stack beat constructing the anonymous arrayref (which gets tossed immediately) then deref'ing, and what the falloff is as @array grows.

Aren't the following functionally equivalent, i.e. Sort, make an array and a reference to it, dereference it, get the [first] item?

print [sort @array]->[0];
print @{[sort @array]}[0];
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Aren't the following functionally equivalent,

Technically, no. [sort @array]->[0]; does return a single element. @{[sort @array]}[0]; however is a slice with one element. I would have expected it to warn - just as @array[0] will warn. The PC way to write it is:

  print ${[sort @array]}[0];
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