Ah so I can use them that way. Data::Dumper produces entries like 'UNIVERSAL::' => *{'::UNIVERSAL::'} for keys denoting a package name, which confused me - can you explain what that is? Is that a symbolic typeglob reference, or something completely different? (Incidentally, typeglobs are the only part of Perl I never even came close to grokking. I understand what they are supposed to be, but the concept is still very alien.)