I've checked prototype parsing and we definitely need the as key to avoid other syntax conflicts.
Array elements are not automatically counted at present.
But the same syntax can be used to fill elements of compound types and arrays of compound types. Unlike C, multiassignments can be done any time and from any offset.
example:
type location string name, single x,y,z
location loclist[8]
loclist[2]<=
"A", 1,1,1,
"B", 1,1,2,
"C", 2,1,3,
"D", 2,1,4
print loclist[3].name + loclist[3].z ' B2