in reply to referencing slices - love that DWIM

See subsection 2 of perlref:Making references where it says:

As a special case, \(@foo) returns a list of references to the contents of @foo, not a reference to @foo itself

Just for fun try: 

print "$_" for \( %{{a =>1}}, @{[1..3]}, "fred" );;

HASH(0x2251b8)
ARRAY(0x194a9f4)
SCALAR(0x194aaa8)

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Re^2: referencing slices - love that DWIM
by GrandFather (Saint) on May 17, 2008 at 11:59 UTC

    With the implication (extrapolated from the perlref quote) that \ notices that it is operating on a list and generates a list of references rather than a reference to list. I had a feeling that I'd seen something more explicit than that, although the quote from the docs does shed a some light on why it does what it does.

    Perl is environmentally friendly - it saves trees
[reply]
      ... rather than a reference to list

      I think there is no such thing as a reference to a list, because a list - in contrast to an array - is not internally represented in a way that it could be referenced in its entirety...

[reply]
        I think there is no such thing as a reference to a list

        1) BrowserUK quoted the documentation that  \(@foo) returns a list of references. Assuming that \(@foo) does, in fact, return a list (as stated by that documentation), then wouldn't [\(@foo)] have to return a reference to that list ?

        2) I find it amazing that the current implementation of \(@foo) DWIMs for so many people. To me, it is blatantly obvious that DWIMness dictates that \(@foo) ought to return the same as [@foo]. (I know one other who shares the same view - but I have no doubt that we are in a minority.)

        3) I should acknowledge that I don't really understand "lists" - and, having read numerous explanations, have grown to accept the fact that I probably never will.

        Cheers,
        Rob
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