Today I came across what seems to this newbie a quite perplexing puzzle. It regards the behaviour of references to filehandles:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

open(OUTFILE, ">out.txt") or die "cannot open out.txt: $!";

my $fred = {};
$fred->{outfile} = \*OUTFILE;
my $barney = $fred->{outfile};

print $barney "This is a test\n";
print $fred->{outfile} "This is another test\n";
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The code above produces the following syntax error:

String found where operator expected at ./test.pl line 11, near "} "Th
+is is another test\n""
        (Missing operator before  "This is another test\n"?)
syntax error at ./monks.pl line 11, near "} "This is another test\n""
Execution of ./test.pl aborted due to compilation errors.
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My question is why does it work for $barney, but not for $fred->{outfile}, when both should contain the same reference?

Thanks in advance for any light you may be able shed upon this matter.