Well, I'd agree with you, if that helps. :)

The person who wrote this code did something pretty silly by using symbolic references. I don't understand why people write things like this (well, okay, so I do: partly, because they come from other languages where it's encouraged or looked upon as the norm). But why do this when you could use a hash and make it *so* much easier for yourself?

Because as silly as that was to use symbolic refs initially, it's even sillier to *defend* them. It's *not* normal. It may be used often, but it's not used by people who know of a better way.

For what it's worth, here's some more ammunition against using symbolic refs: http://www.plover.com/~mjd/perl/varvarname2.html.

In the end, it's not your code--and if their system is going to break because of their broken programming techniques... hopefully that won't be your problem. :)