Shouldn't accessing @Whatever::whatever produce at least a warning instead of an empty array?

Question

In the following code:

use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;

my %hash = %Whatever::whatever;
my @array = @Whatever::whatever;
print Dumper \@array;
print Dumper \%hash;

My understanding is that @Whatever::whatever is accessing the symbol table, and doesn't produce an error message because symbol table is a hash. But why there isn't at least a warning message for accessing a non-existing element?

Answer 1

Because it's almost impossible to catch a global variable in a state of non-existence in Perl. As soon as you mention one by name — even just to take a reference to it — it exists. And because arrays and hashes are different from scalars; a scalar comes into existence holding the value undef, which triggers a "use of uninitialized value" warning when used for most purposes; but arrays and hashes come into existence as empty arrays and hashes, and an empty array or hash isn't exceptional enough to warn about!