A possibly helpful test:
c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -le
"use warnings;
use strict;
;;
use Test::More 'no_plan';
use Test::NoWarnings;
;;
note 'perl version: ', $];
;;
@_ = qw(a b c);
note 'raw print list context shift: ', (shift @_)[ 0, 0, 0 ];
;;
@_ = qw(a b c);
ok 'aaa' eq join('', (shift @_)[ 0, 0, 0 ]), 'joined shift';
;;
@_ = qw(a b c);
my @ra = (shift @_)[ 0, 0, 0 ];
is_deeply \@ra, [ 'a', 'a', 'a' ], 'assigned shift';
;;
@ra = ('x', 'y', 'z')[ 0, 0, 0 ];
is_deeply \@ra, [ 'x', 'x', 'x' ], 'assigned list';
;;
done_testing;
"
# perl version: 5.014004
# raw print list context shift: aaa
ok 1 - joined shift
not ok 2 - assigned shift
# Failed test 'assigned shift'
# at -e line 1.
# Structures begin differing at:
# $got->[1] = undef
# $expected->[1] = 'a'
ok 3 - assigned list
1..3
ok 4 - no warnings
1..4
# Looks like you failed 1 test of 4.
Update: The problem seems to have been localized between about versions 5.14.x and 5.18.x inclusive so the following may be irrelevant, but just for the heck of it, the code above passes all tests for ActiveState 5.008009 and Strawberries 5.010001 and 5.012003, all running under Windows 7.
Give a man a fish: <%-{-{-{-<