Thanks GrandFather. That's what I thought the test was actually doing

So what's a good way to test for truth here?
The reason for the post is that I've written a few subroutines that either return a reference to a complex data structure OR filter entries out of the previously created data structure. The problem I noticed was that if I ended up filtering out all of the entries and returning a reference to the filtered data structure, my test for truth returned unexpected results ( ie: it returned true eventhough the data structure was empty.

3 follow up questions:
1. Should I be returning references from these types of sub-routines?
2. If so, what's the best way to return them?
3. What's a good way to test for truthfulness: 

if ( %$ref ) {
 ...do something
}

[download]

or... 

if ( %$ref && ref $ref eq 'HASH' ) {
 ...do something
}

[download]

Thanks again for your help.
njcodewarrior

In reply to Re^2: Truthfulness of references by njcodewarrior
in thread Truthfulness of references by njcodewarrior

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