Update: Changed the foreach push to a simple push. I will now lay down the crack pipe and step away from the keyboard.

Using ref is quite frequently an indication of a design flaw. The higher level the code you're writing, the less likely it is that you'll want to use it. Here's an example that could cause a problem:

    my $foo = some_func();
    if ('ARRAY' eq ref $foo) {
        push @data => @$foo;
    }
    else {
        push @data => $foo;
    }
[download]

That's bug prone. Instead, it might be cleaner if some_func() always returned an array ref. If that's the case, the above code becomes:

    my $foo = some_func();
    push @data => @$foo;
[download]

The code becomes easier to read and understand as a result.

If we're talking about what a function might accept, though, I'm a bit less stringent, but it's still easy to write bugs.

    sub some_func {
        my $self = shift;
        my @data = 'ARRAY' eq ref $_[0]
            ? @$_[0]
            : @_;
        # do stuff
    }
[download]

On the surface, it looks like some_funct() can take an array, a list, or an array reference, and still behaves the same, regardless. However, what happens if some tries to pass in a list where the first element is also an array ref? Program fall down and go boom.

In short, I don't disagree with using ref. Further, it might be appropriate for your program but I can't really say as I don't know what you are doing. However, any time you see someone using ref, you should look very carefully at their program to see if bugs are crawling around in there.

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