I find this to be a matter of documentation. There are no standards. You can do anything you want, all willy-nilly and whatnot. Whenever I see data being passed by reference to a module(method/function), I assume it's fair game for that data to be modified, unless the docs explicitly state that's not gonna happen. If the docs say it's not gonna happen, and it does, then it is clearly a bug (otherwise it's fair game, like i already said).

MJD says "you can't just make shit up and expect the computer to know what you mean, retardo!"

I run a Win32 PPM repository for perl 5.6.x and 5.8.x -- I take requests (README).

** The third rule of perl club is a statement of fact: pod is sexy.