I want to pass by reference so I have no chance of harming my origional data.

I think you're a little confused about what passing-by-reference entails. You can easily take a reference to a reference -- you were correct about how to do that ( \$arrayRef ). If $refref is a reference to a reference to an array, then you can get the original array with @$$refref. But this does nothing to protect your original data. You're just going through an extra dereferencing step. If you want to make a copy of your original data, do a super-search for "deep copy." There are lots of methods depending on your needs.