According to perlsub inside a subroutine the elements of @_ are aliased to the items in the list that are passed to the subroutine. Passing by reference means you pass one or more references in the arguments to the subroutine. Then elements of @_ are aliased to the references and you can make local copies inside the subroutine.

"Pass By Reference" (vs. "Pass By Value") is a general computer science term which is implemented as "aliasing" in Perl.

Perl's "references" are totally different.

update

Context matters: Canadians are North Americans proud not to be Americans. ;)

update

OK, I consider this perlsub#Pass-by-Reference a documentation bug.

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language and ☆☆☆☆ :)
Je suis Charlie!}