I go for references too. Couple of justifications:

Since I almost always want to pass by reference to avoid copying, and often want to pass in multiple arrays or hashes, having a reference is a good default.
Not having non-reffed arrays and hashes floating around means more consistency in the use of $ and -> almost everywhere.

In reply to Re^4: Specify sort method on the fly by SuicideJunkie
in thread Specify sort method on the fly by rethaew

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