Against rules 1-3, I always sorta thought of a pointer/reference to a hash object as basically a hash(with certain perks). There don't really seem to be void-ish references.
Perl creates a runtime error if you take
$hash = {}
and try to dereference it as an array or anything else(er well hashes and arrays are about it) such as
@$hash.
Perl seems to think a reference to a hash is still a hash but wants to protect the user a bit in terms of nasty memory issues.
Doing $hash->{ $key } basically acts just like a hash object with slightly different syntax. So $hash->{ 'runtime' . $key } seems like a normal progression.
D