1) Well, if you feel better using the & go ahead, just keep in mind that &foo(); and &foo; are two very different things. The first statement calls the foo() subroutine with no parameters while the second one calls it aliasing its @_ to the current @_. That is any changes to @_ made within foo() will affect the current subroutine!

2) No, the my affects only the variable, no its contents. So the ifpoll() receives a reference to the caller's %datahash and assigns the reference to its own variable $datahash. The my itself doesn't affect the %datahash in any way.

3) Per has to flatten hash assignments. It might make some optimizations like preallocating the right number of buckets, but it has to create a new hash anc copy the values. So that changing one hash doesn't affect the other.
The %newhash = %oldhash; makes a copy, not another name for the same "object".

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