When a variable contains "a reference," anything that you do to it is automatically and transparently conveyed to act upon its "target." But, that very same variable could at some time cease to contain a "reference" value and, instead, contain an ordinary scalar value, in which case it would behave altogether differently than before.

From perlref:

References are easy to use in Perl. There is just one overriding principle: in general, Perl does no implicit referencing or dereferencing. When a scalar is holding a reference, it always behaves as a simple scalar. It doesn't magically start being an array or hash or subroutine; you have to tell it explicitly to do so, by dereferencing it.

You are once again completely, utterly wrong. Dereferencing is a general concept that applies to many programming languages.

Your posting history has revealed your business model:

Step 1: Market yourself as someone who fixes "legacy software projects that have wandered far off-course", i.e. cleaning up others' messes

Step 2: Troll programming websites and (a) spread misinformation to those seeking help and (b) cause other professional Perl devs to waste their time proofreading and correcting you instead of helping people

Step 3: Profit!

Your LinkedIn profile claims you were an instructor at Scottsdale Community College. I can only assume you used the same approach there, training the next generation of bad programmers. Well, I guess us average Perl devs might be thankful to you for screwing the curve and making us look better. Or maybe you already recognized that and are getting paid for this service by other developers - that'd be quite a racket!