Yes, my point is that you simply can't assume an object can be de-referenced to an array. The tie mechanism useful for creating algorithms that can handle objects without implying knowledge about their implementation. Otherwise this would defeat the whole purpose using tie. So it is still a good question, any other solutions appreciated.

But that statement refers to the reference returned by tie which is not an array reference. The tied array works like a normal array.

I don't understand, what you call 'not an array reference' is what I call 'object', so don't we mean the same thing?

In:

use ar ;
my @ar ;
my $art = tie @ar, "ar" ;
@ar = (1, 2) ;
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My point is, I cannot know what $art is, so to me this is a big no no:

   my @ar-deref = @{$art};
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