SAMS Teach Yourself Perl in 24 Hours THIRD EDITION

Reference Basics

You create and assign a normal scalar variable by using an assignment operator, as follows:

$a="Stones";   # A normal scalar

After this snippet, a scalar variable called $a is created, and it contains the string "Stones". Now, somewhere within the computer's memory, there is a place labeled $a that contains that string, as illustrated here:

If you were to assign the scalar $a to $b—like $b=$a;—you would wind up with two copies of the data, withtwo different names, as shown here:

Having two copies might be acceptable if you want ...