This is a very basic problem and I've tried many different ways to make this work. I've looked at References quick reference by tye, perlref and checked a few books, but can't find anything quite like my code.

This is the closest I have come, but I end up with a reference to an array instead of an array for @fields. I've used similar structures before but not exactly in this way:

use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;

my @fields;
GetTables('ABC', \@fields);

print Dumper(\@fields);

sub GetTables {
   my ($table_name, $aref) = @_;
   my %tables = (
         'ABC' => [ qw( f1 f2 f3)
            ],
         'DEF' => [  'f1', 'f2'
            ],
   );
   
   @$aref = $tables{$table_name}; 
   ## originally I had the following, but it didn't work
   ## $aref = $tables{$table_name};

   print Dumper(\%tables, $aref);
}

[download]
The results look like this: 
$VAR1 = {
          'ABC' => [
                     'f1',
                     'f2',
                     'f3'
                   ],
          'DEF' => [
                     'f1',
                     'f2'
                   ]
        };
$VAR2 = [
          $VAR1->{'ABC'}
        ];
$VAR1 = [
          [
            'f1',
            'f2',
            'f3'
          ]
        ];

[download]
The problem is, I want the last dump to be a plain array, which should look like the following: 
$VAR1 = [
          'f1',
          'f2',
          'f3'
        ];

[download]
Can someone please show me where I've gone astray? Thanks.

In reply to Referencing a HoA by Anonymous Monk

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