bigup401:   Further to poj's reply:   Also note that if  $data were an array reference,  $data and  \@$data would be exactly the same thing:

c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -le
"my @ra = (1, 2, 3);
 my $ar = \@ra;
 my $ref_deref_ref = \@$ar;
 print qq{$ar $ref_deref_ref};
 ;;
 $ar == $ref_deref_ref or die 'not same';
"
ARRAY(0x145ff0) ARRAY(0x145ff0)
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