The ref isn't the problem. The problem is the curly braces, which create an anon hash reference; then you try to assign that to the %defaults hash. So you're assigning a reference, where an even-sized list (a list of key-value pairs) was expected. Hence the error message.

Change that line to this: 

    my %defaults = ref( $_[2+$[] ) ? %{$_[2+$[]} : ();

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In reply to Re: Reference found where even-sized list expected by btrott
in thread Reference found where even-sized list expected by Adam

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