References are like boxes. If you take a picture of them, you get just that: the box. To get to the content, you first have to open them. It's the same with references. If you print them, you just get that: some kind of 'spooky' representation of the reference. To get to the content, open it. For references pointing to arrays, you do that by placing a @ in front of the reference. So, for instance:

    print "@$array_ref\n";
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Abigail