i always like to start with $stuff or $something. nice & descriptive. (:
do a lot of people use variable prefixes like $hr_something (hash ref), and $a_stuff (array ref)
to show the type? my officemate/code reviewer
has had me using these for a while- i don't know that it's helped
my programming so much, but it makes it easier for him to find
my bugs. it might be more of a Cish thing than a perlish thing.