Suppose you have a subroutine which returns an array ref. There are basically two ways to do it: 
sub first_way {
  my @list;
  ... add elements to @list...
  \@list;
}

sub second_way {
  my @list;
  ... add elements to @list...
  [ @list ];
}

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Is there any significant differences between the two in terms of performance or memory usage?

Are there any potentially adverse consequences of holding on to references to static lexical variables?

Update: replaced static with lexical

In reply to returning ref to static var vs. copying by perl5ever

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