in reply to elegant array assignment

If an object has been blessed, Perls ref built in will return the class, not its type. Thus this code might not do what you expect for blessed array references.

Scalar::Util's reftype function consistantly returns the type and might be a better choice here:

use Scalar::Util qw/reftype/; my @arr = reftype( $x ) eq 'ARRAY' ? @$x : ( $x );