Hmm, interesting fact: my first impression of Merlyn's comment was not offensive at all. I mean, I happen to have read the appropriate Apocalypse about dereferencing List/Hash elements. For me, Merlyn's comment just looks like an enlightenment on the subject rather than saying "you're plain wrong" - a way of giving help and improve indpendent judgement at once.

On the other hand, if you're just here for some cut-and-paste coding, this way of thinking is likely a mere distraction.

Anyway, from Apocalypse 2 (not the main discussion about interpolation, but it's mentioned here as well):

Note for those who are thinking we should just stick with Perl 5 interpolation rules: We have to allow % to introduce interpolation now because individual hash values are no longer named with $foo{$bar}, but rather %foo{$bar}. So we might as well allow interpolation of complete hashes.

Conclusion: I don't think this discussion is worth a standard reply disclaimer block ;-)

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Cheers, Joe