<merlyn>First, I point you to an article I wrote.</merlyn>

Basically, doing *alias = \$name makes $alias and $name the same thing. Thus, doing *alias = \*name is making all things with a symbol name 'alias' the same thing as those with the name 'name' (in some specific package, let's say main::).

The wonderful thing about globs is that they can be used where references are expected: @{ *foo } is like @{ \@foo }. Thus, you can use a glob where you would ordinarily use a reference to a glob. That means that you can say *alias = *name instead of *alias = \*name.

Another reason that *alias = *name works the same way as *alias = \*name is because you can assign a string to a typeglob: 

*foo = "bar";
print *foo;  # *main::bar
*foo = "this::that";
print *foo;  # *this::that

[download]
So, since a glob in scalar context is its "name", you can assign that name to a glob.

P.S. You can't say \*alias = ..., since you can't assign to a reference of something (that's why \$foo = \$bar doesn't work).

japhy -- Perl and Regex Hacker

In reply to Re: Taken out of Context by japhy
in thread Taken out of Context by Petruchio

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.