Why don't you do this:

my @myArray = qw/three-point-oh three-point-one three-point-two/;
$myHash{"tres"} = \@myArray;

# then do everything onto @myArray;
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Because in my actual program, I'm not creating the array from scratch. The whole datastructure is given to me, and I have to manipulate it and return it back to the calling program.

In the actual program, it is an array of a hash of a hash, and the array itself could contain thousands of members. That's why I don't want to use dereferencing and that's why I didn't want to copy it.

I posted a simple program to demonstrate that concept.