Taking a reference to an enumerated list is not the same as using square brackets--instead it's the same as creating a list of references!

    @list = (\$a, \@b, \%c);
    @list = \($a, @b, %c);    # same thing!
[download]

As a special case, \(@foo) returns a list of references to the contents of @foo, not a reference to @foo itself. Likewise for %foo, except that the key references are to copies (since the keys are just strings rather than full-fledged scalars).

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use Data::Dumper;

$ref=\(1..3);
$enum_list_ref=\(1,2,3);
@a=(\(1..3),\(5..9));

print "\n".Dumper($ref)."\n";
print "\n".Dumper($enum_list_ref)."\n";
print "\n".Dumper(\@a)."\n";
[download]