salva claims in Re: Non-blocking socket read on Windows that
ioctl($socket, 0x8004667e, $nonblocking); $nonblocking = 1 => makes the socket non blocking,
$nonblocking = 0 => makes the socket blocking.
So he's not using a scalar reference...

I also found use of the magic number in a CPAN module, Win32::Socketpair, again, by salva. Again, not using a reference.

p.s. in my internet search I stumbled across a rather interesting recent blog post.

In reply to Re: ioctl for non-blocking and blocking in Windows by bart
in thread ioctl for non-blocking and blocking in Windows by Anonymous Monk

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