Considering that arrays and hashes can only contain scalars, how do you construct multi-dimensional datastructures?

The first paragraph of the description section of 'man perlref' says Any scalar may hold a hard reference. (Hard reference is used here to indicate it's not a soft- or symbolic reference). If references aren't scalars, what does that sentence mean? 

$ perl -MDevel::Peek -wle 'my $dbh = "foo"; Dump \$dbh'
SV = RV(0x8194068) at 0x817cca0
  REFCNT = 1
  FLAGS = (TEMP,ROK)
  RV = 0x817cd54
  SV = PV(0x817cf90) at 0x817cd54
    REFCNT = 2
    FLAGS = (PADBUSY,PADMY,POK,pPOK)
    PV = 0x818f688 "foo"\0
    CUR = 3
    LEN = 4

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Devel::Peek thinks that \$dbh is an SV, which stands for scalar value.

So, what is it that makes you think that references aren't scalars? Do you have documentation quotes, code fragments, or pointers to the source that back up your claim?

Abigail

In reply to Re: Why was it neccessary to pass a DBI handler by reference? by Abigail-II
in thread Why was it neccessary to pass a DBI handler by reference? by kudra

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