Thanks for all the responses. I appreciate the time you all took to provide an answer and the answers all pretty much confirm what I thought I already knew.

Here's an excerpt from the documentation on the CGI::param method: "...param returns a list of all of the values if it is called in a list context and just the first value if it is called in a scalar context.". So I wanted to avoid copying the contents of $q->param('at0') to another location and then passing a reference to that new array. I just wanted to pass a reference to the existing array. Hence my desire to use option 2) instead of 1). But using option 2) returns the following runtime error: "Can't use string ("H&C05.01") as an ARRAY ref...". Just to clear up the nature of the beast a few prints may be useful:

print Dumper($q->param('at0'))."\n"; # generates:
$VAR1 = 'H&C05.01';
$VAR2 = 'SETT04.03';
[download]

print Dumper([$q->param('at0')])."\n"; # generates:
$VAR1 = [
          'H&C05.01',
          'SETT04.03'
        ];
[download]

print \@{$q->param('at0')}."\n"; # generates:
Can't use string ("H&C05.01") as an ARRAY ref while "strict refs" in u
+se at ...
[download]

So I'm probably being really dense here, but I still don't understand why I can't just generate a reference to the existing array instead of copying the contents of the array to another location and generating a reference to that new location. Is it because I'm working with a method instead of a property of the CGI object?

Still in the fog.

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