• The comma was intentional. Just ask merlyn.
• There were two tweaks, and neither invalidated your analysis.
  1. Output a newline character at the end of the run.
  2. Eliminate the hot topic of whether $|++ is appropriate style. I eliminated it by using a suggestion from tye that is more obviously bad style: ${bless\$|}-=1. The $|++ "idiom" confuses intent, so we don't like to encourage its use.

Congratulations on "getting" the symbol table trickery and global distruction coersion. That really was the point of the obfu. The shimmering look was just window dressing. ;)