The ternary operator was designed (by Thompson and Ritchie, the inventors of C) to make this sort of thing simple.

Just use: 

$ref = $hash_count  ? \%hash : 
       $array_count ? \@array :
                      $ref_to_all_lines_in_file;

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Note that no parentheses of any sort are necessary.

In reply to Re: Nested Ternary Operators by Dominus
in thread Nested Ternary Operators by reyjrar

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