I'll ask straight up... why in the name of all things good are you advising to use symbolic references? After I read that, I found it hard to identify how this even answers the OP's question.

Try it and you will see, it lets the OP use @array instead of $ref

also, its not a symbolic reference

My bad... I'll re-state... "an unbounded, unconfined and completely dangerous assignment to a variable namespace that has global symbolic table access. This clobberes the symtab, which is *always* a bad idea, unless you *really* know what you're doing". No matter how you word it, it's very bad advice.

Update: The people answering questions should *always* ensure their responses work properly without issue under the strict and warnings pragmas, and thereafter, advise the OP to do so as well.

My bad... I'll re-state... "an unbounded, unconfined and completely dangerous assignment to a variable namespace that has global symbolic table access. This clobberes the symtab, which is *always* a bad idea, unless you *really* know what you're doing". No matter how you word it, it's very bad advice.

The re-statement is also wrong

It neither unbounded nor unconfined, its limited to the subs the OP has ... or the file

It also isn't completely dangerous

Nor is it "an assignment to a variable namespace that has global symbollic table access"

It overrides one single symbol exactly, with lexical scoping (ie safe), temporarily

You're wrong, learn from it

Update: The people answering questions should *always* ensure their responses work properly without issue under the strict and warnings pragmas, and thereafter, advise the OP to do so as well.

This guys answer does work under both strict and warnings

Al so, there is no such requirement for posting on perlmonks