Why do you need $ when accessing array and hash elements in Perl?

Question

Since arrays and hashes can only contain scalars in Perl, why do you have to use the $ to tell the interpreter that the value is a scalar when accessing array or hash elemen

Answer 1

People have already pointed out that you can have slices and contexts, but sigils are there to separate the things that are variables from everything else. You don't have to know all of the keywords or subroutine names to choose a sensible variable name. It's one of the big things I miss about Perl in other languages.