I have little to add, since your question has been answered already. I just want to give you some pointers where to read more about references, because sooner or later, and probably sooner, you will need to know how references works since there are pitfalls that you need to be aware of.

These four documents all deal with references. I recommend you to read them in the same order I list them here.

    perlreftut
    perlref
    perllol
    perldsc
[download]

Hope this helps,
ihb