Please compare the analogue situation in JS where [] and {} explicitly documented as "literal".°

See also Readonly which makes the explicit distinction about overwriting a variable holding an array and protecting the deep content.

UPDATE

°)

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/Array

Arrays can be created using the literal notation:

let fruits = ['Apple', 'Banana'];

console.log(fruits.length); // 2
console.log(fruits[0]);     // "Apple"
[download]

All I can say is that I personally strongly disagree with your use of term "literal" in this context, and I think that any attempt to draw an analogy between 1 and 1 is specious. The former is a literal value appearing in the source code and used as a compile-time constant. The latter is a run-time list constructor.

But regardless of that, there is still the question of whether the reference returned by [] and {} should be marked readonly. I suppose it could be but Larry never thought to do so, and there doesn't seem any point in changing it now.

Dave.

> But regardless of that, there is still the question of whether the reference returned by [] and {} should be marked readonly. I suppose it could be but Larry never thought to do so,

Thanks, at least someone beside Hauke who is not trying to convince me that the issue doesn't exist at all. \o/

> and there doesn't seem any point in changing it now.

Well ... catching errors would be an issue, don't you think?

But like always with old errors, I wouldn't surprised if they became "features".

After changing, some CPAN modules might break because they did something like

sub func {
    $_[0] //= { the_default => "values" };
    ...
}
[download]

which is a broken approach to default values ...

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery}

(you forgot to put [1] into code-tags)

> The former is a literal value appearing in the source code and used as a compile-time constant.

Well a compile-time constant with varying refs? Looks pretty much like just another constructor like [1] to me.

use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dump qw/pp dd/;


use constant a => 1;
$\="\n";

print \1;   # SCALAR(0xdf00e0)
print \1;   # SCALAR(0xdef540)

print \(a); # SCALAR(0x2a19c70)
print \(a); # SCALAR(0x2a19c70)
[download]

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery}