#!/usr/bin/perl use Data::Dumper; use strict; use warnings; my @list = (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7); print "@list\n"; my @short = @list[1..4]; print "@short\n"; my $ref = \{@list[2..4]}; print Dumper $ref; __DATA__ 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 Odd number of elements in anonymous hash at C:\test_bed\testme.pl line 10. $VAR1 = \{ '4' => undef, '2' => 3 };