I have to produce code that is readable and easy to follow for our support group. Sometimes I have a slighly complex datastructure like this:

$myHash{"uno"} = "one";
$myHash{"dos"} = "two";
$myHash{"tres"}->[0] = "three-point-oh";
$myHash{"tres"}->[1] = "three-point-one";
$myHash{"tres"}->[2] = "three-point-two";
$myHash{"quatro"} = "four";

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I want to manipulate the array in $myHash{"tres"}, and in order to prevent deferencing it all the time, I'll copy it into an actual array: 
@myArray = @{$myHash{"tres"}};   #DeRef & Copy to @myArray

$myArray[3] = "three-point-three";
$myArray[4] = "three-point-four";

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Once I'm done manipulating the data, I want to put it back into the original data structure. I can do either one of these: 
@{$myHash{"tres"}} =  @myArray;    #Copies Array to Hash
$myHash{"tres"} =  \@myArray;      #Copies Ref to Hash

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For very large arrays, the second statement is faster than the first one.

Of course, the problem is my initial copy to @myArray is not very efficient either. What I'd really love to do is something like this: 

\@myArray = $myHash{"tres"};

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Which would allow me to refer to $myHash{"tres"} as @myArray in my code without copying the whole array in the first place. (Then, I wouldn't even worry about putting the array back into my original data structure).

I guess what I'm really interested in is creating an alias of $myHash{"tres"} as @myArray. Is there anyway to do that in Perl?

In reply to Getting an Array Reference Into an Array by qazwart

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