if i do

my %list = ( 'lang' => 'de' );
my $listref = \%list;
print ref($listref);
[download]

i get REF. if i do

my $listref = { 'lang' => 'de' };
print ref($listref);
[download]

i get HASH.

i use this with CGI. so i initialize the hash as follow:

use vars qw($query @parname %list $n );

$query = new CGI;
@parname = $query->param;
foreach $n (@parname) {
   $list{$n} = $query->param($n);
}
[download]

i then just pass \%list along to a function which takes the refenrence and uses the hash again. i used exactly this code (copy/paste) in another app, there it worked fine. the environment is the same, too.

kind of puzzled. update: if i update the initialization to:

$query = new CGI;
@parname = $query->param;
foreach $n (@parname) {
  $hashref->{$n} = $query->param($n);
}
[download]

everything works fine. hm...