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];
[download]

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.