Indeed.

When I posted the OP, I really was hoping for a 'use an anonymous block to disambiguate an indirect object' type of fix.

The original designer of Perl ought to have repented long ago and designed a better language as penance. :-)

Don't be too hard on him. I'm still of the opinion that he did a pretty damn good job with Perl 5.

So good in fact that after 7 years of pretty in-depth usage I'm still 'discovering' built-in features that allow one or two statements to do the same job as would take one or two screenfuls in most other languages.

What's more, the way the language elements combine to effect those features, they can not have come about by a accident. They had to have been thought about in depth at the design stage, despite the fact that in many cases there are one (or a dozen) modules on CPAN that re-implement those features, (often badly), using one or two (or three) screenfuls. Usually authored by someone who went looking for the feature but failed to recognise the forethought that had gone into providing for it, and simply missed it.

As for Perl 6. Raduko seems to be coming along quite nicely. I really hope that the implementation eventually meets up with the authors vision. I can see myself spending twice as long (and more) as its prolonged gestation, exploring all it's facets. And thoroughly enjoying the experience.