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

I can think of one way that

$x = myarray[1];

is ambiguous - what if you wanted a array called m?

$x = m[1];

How can you tell that apart from a regex match?

In other words, the syntax is there to help the Perl interpreter, well, interpret!