No, Learning Perl doesn't cover references. However, that means that merlyn felt that references shouldn't be brought up in the first 4 weeks of teaching a complete novice how to program from scratch. A complete novice, not a professional learning another language.

If you have someone who already knows how to program, they shouldn't be using Learning Perl after the first week. They should be diving into Programming Perl and loving it! When I taught my successors at my previous position how to program in Perl, I didn't waste their time with Learning Perl. They knew how to program, and quite well. They just didn't know Perl.

You don't need to describe memory locations or anything like that to someone who knows Java or C/C++. "A reference is basically a pointer, but nicer." is what you tell a C programmer. "A reference is a reference." is what you tell a Java programmer. There. That's all there is to references.

I'm sorry, but I fail to see why you want to baby your professionals.

------
/me wants to be the brightest bulb in the chandelier!

Vote paco for President!