Yes, it's working by accident (no spaces nor * in @x). For example:

perl -E '@arr=("a b",
    "c d",
    qw/e f g h a*/);
while (my $e = <@arr>) {
    say $e
}'
[download]

gives this output for me:

a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
address.txt
address.txt~
analytic
ascii.htm
aux-no-lex.lst
[download]