Don't forget to escape square brackets, the left one is all you really need to worry about: [@array]

Anyways ... [@array] copies the contents of the array into a new anonymous array reference. I think the name for the collection of those contents is called a list ... so you could say that the l-value of [@array] is an anymous array that contains a copy of @array's list ... i think. Understanding the difference between Perl's lists and arrays can be tricky, and i often get it wrong. :/

Here is some more code to study:

#!/usr/bin/perl -l

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

my @array = 0..4;

my $ref1 = \@array;
my $ref2 = \@array;

my $copy1 = [@array];
my $copy2 = [@array];

print Dumper $ref1,$copy1;
print for ($ref1,$ref2,$copy1,$copy2);

undef @array;
print Dumper $ref2,$copy2;
[download]

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)