I've spent today working on better understanding how complex data structures work in Perl and I've come up with a question.

If you do the following.. 

my $ref = CreateRef();

sub CreateRef {
  my %some_hash = ('foo' => 'bar');
  return \%some_hash;
}

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Now is it safe to use what's at $ref? I've used Data::Dumper to view data refrenced by a returned refrence but just because it's there now, doesn't mean that it's going to be there later. So, can anyone share with me the rules about when data becomes "freed"?

Thanks,
Rich

In reply to Variables living outside their scope by rchiav

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