But, but, but .... the code just presented doesn't compile! It does not even spit out an appropriate error message or some useful diagnostics. WHY? What is happening here?
Faced with this problem, I had to reduce the problem to a minimum, something I learned in the past. So I came up with a test case that I could post to perlbug@perl.org
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# use strict;
# use diagnostics;
my $e010101 = "Value 1";
my @e = (0, { 101 => $e010101 });
format OLD0 =
@<<<<<<<<<<
$e010101
.
format NEW0 =
@<<<<<<<<<<
$e[1]{101}
.
format NEW0 =
@<<<<<<<<<<
"$e[1]{101}"
.
No answers, no patches, no nothing. I was left on my own. What next?