> probably collapse $array[$x]->{foo}->[0] to $array[$x]{foo}[0] ...

Yup, one's been able to collapse exactly like that for more than twenty years.

https://metacpan.org/source/LWALL/perl5.002b3/pod/perlref.po...

That's from 5.002, from last century, and it wasn't introduced on 5.002.

Beginning from v5.20, one's also been able to use the postfix dereference syntax, turning:

say join "\t", @{ $foo->{bar}[0]{quux} }

into:

say join "\t", $foo->{bar}[0]{quux}->@*;

Whether that's better or worse, it's debatable.

You're right! I always preferred the explicit arrow because it reminded me of C. Dammit now I want to write perl. I miss autovivification so much. Most people hate the pointer syntax and call it unreadable. I think there should be a perl tricks page that lists all these tricks.