...this was the most concise statement of the answer I saw here.

The problem was the form of referenced used in the example. (use square brackets for array elements, curly braces for hash elements.)

I would also second the suggestion made above that references are something to defer until you are certain that you have a good grasp of the basic data structures. But if you feel that you are ready, it's a very powerful mechanism. (just like pointers are in C programming.)

---v