The "subtle difference" is that push-ing to an array reference was an experimental feature (added circa-5.10 IIRC | added with Perl 5.14, removed as of Perl 5.24) that is now removed. For this reason, I would avoid it even if your particular version of Perl still supports it. (Update: If you intend ever to publish your module, I would absolutely avoid it!) 

Win8 Strawberry 5.30.3.1 (64)  Sun 04/11/2021 19:15:44
C:\@Work\Perl\monks
>perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use Data::Dump qw(dd);

my %attrs = qw(foo 1  bar 2);;

my @products = ({
    'id'            => 0,
    'name'          => 'Test',
    'description'   => 'Some test data',
    'qty'           => 1,
    'price'         => 1000,
});
$attrs{'trolley'} = \@products;

my $self = \%attrs;

my $new_product = { qw(id 1  name Widget) };

push      $self->{'trolley'},   $new_product;
# push @{ $self->{'trolley'} }, $new_product;

dd \%attrs;

^Z
Experimental push on scalar is now forbidden at - line 22, near "$new_
+product;"
Execution of - aborted due to compilation errors.

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Give a man a fish:  <%-{-{-{-<

In reply to Re: Pushing hash ref onto array ref by AnomalousMonk
in thread Pushing hash ref onto array ref by Bod

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