That depends on your definition of "better".

2;0 juerd@ouranos:~$ perl -we'@_[0]'
Scalar value @_[0] better written as $_[0] at -e line 1.
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That's my definition. @_[0] is an array slice, which happens to have a single value, and just happens to work because of that. For example:

my @foo = qw(a b c d e f g h i j);
my @bar = @foo[1, 5, 6, 4];         # @bar is now qw(b f g e)
my $bar = $foo[0];
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When you want a scalar, USE a scalar :)

If you're writing code to parse a language which is deliberately confusing, it's arguably better to parse it in as confusing a way as possible.

Perhaps, but I don't agree. And even if you were right, there's no need to use PERL for that. (note: "PERL" ne "Perl").

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W5kIHBhY2soKS4gQnV0IGRvIHlvdS
ByZWNvZ25pc2UgQmFzZTY0IHdoZW4
geW91IHNlZSBpdD8gIC0tIEp1ZXJk

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