It is pretty much no longer recommended anywhere because it (ab)uses context and returns array/hash ref in scalar context and an array/hash in list context. While this is actually a fairly common idiom in Perl which I myself am long guilty of (ab)using (heck I even wrote the original auto-def code), it really is evil and should be stopped. The problem is that Perl context sensitivity can easily be the source of annoying and difficult to spot bugs, like for instance ...

# normal usage, works just fine ...
my @foo = $obj->foo; 
my $foo = $obj->foo; 

# but ...
$other_obj->bar( foos => $obj->foo ); # whoops!

# should actually be the more ugly ...
$other_obj->bar( foos => scalar $obj->foo );
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While it might seem trivial, it really can be difficult to track down sometimes, especially when this is your primary accessor. But of course, it is nice to not have to manually de-ref all the time (Perl 5.13++) which is pretty much why the Hash trait and Array trait both have an 'elements' to delegate to that returns the derefed item in a non-context sensitive way.