References to Various Perl Datatypes
References are pointers. A reference variable stores an address. In this way you can store a pointer to a huge chunk of data and later dereference the pointer to get at the data.
What Is a Reference?
You can think of a Perl reference as a scalar whose value is the address in memory of where a piece of data is stored. The piece of data may be a simple value, such as a string, or it might be more complex, such as a record consisting of a name, an occupation, and a series of elements relating to the occupation. In Perl, a reference is a scalar variable that contains the address of some arbitrarily complex piece of data.
Scalar References
One way to create a reference is by using the \ symbol. You can think of ...
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