You should omit the parentheses, they try to call the sub before the reference is made. my $cref = \&getGlobalName;

I'm unclear whether you're asking about C scoping rules for variables outside a function definition's scope, operations on a reference passed as an argument, or for external access to a function's internal variables. I think you mean the latter.

In C/C++ you can safely "reach in" only for malloc'd (or new'd) store. A popular error is to return a reference to some auto variable within a function's definition block. By contrast, it is perfectly alright to return a reference to a lexical in perl. Reference counting keeps the value alive,

sub foo {
    my @stuff = @_;
    # do stuff to @stuff
    return \@stuff;
}
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