You can avoid an extra refcount on @array by either wrapping it in in a narrow scope 
{
    my @array = ....;
    push (@{$self->{files}}, \@array);
}

[download]
but this is unlikely to be the source of your problem. Can you produce a complete but stripped down bit of code that reproduces this problem? Then we could run it on our own machines and advise you better. ie something that just initialises the array, then calls next repeatedly.

In reply to Re: Memory Management and Array references by dave_the_m
in thread Memory Management and Array references by crabbdean

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