Limbic~Region. I fail to see the ambiguity?

I am aware of the two different defaults for shift, but if I'm using shift inside a subroutine, and let's face it the vast majority of uses are right up there at the top of the subroutine just below the sub, then there is no ambiguity. So explicitly naming @_ on every use of shift just seems like cargo cult to me.

If we go down the slippery slope of deeming the implicit use of defaults as bad practice, then we're well on our way to throwing the baby out with the bath water. Today @_. Tomorrow $_.

The day after that him, her, it, this, that, they ... :)

As with so many of these 'to avoid confusing the newbie' measures, we're always defending against the lack of knowledge of the newbie maintenance programmer--though I doubt anyone could survive more than a month of coding Perl without becoming familiar with this--but I never see anyone owning up to how they still find it confusing after some minimal period of familiarity with perl.

And if no one ever is still confused after some minimal period, then who are we protecting?