in reply to Re^2: list references
in thread list references

Yes - that DOES look strange.
Here is what I get on my " perl, v5.8.3 built for MSWin32-x86-multi-thread" 
C:\> perl -e "$ref=\(1..3); print $$ref"
3


C:\>perl -e "$ref=\(1..3); print qq(@$ref\n)"
Not an ARRAY reference at -e line 1.


C:\>perl -e "$ref=[1..3]; print qq(@$ref\n)"
1 2 3

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