My apologies. I thought the whole discussion was about the preferred technique for passing named subroutine parameters: the names wind up being hash keys, i.e., strings, and the parameters wind up being hash values, i.e., anything that can be represented as a scalar, including a reference.
Another point about which I am still confused is "Try using a reference as a hash key ... " in the reply Re^3: Preferred technique for named subroutine parameters? by akho.
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Correct, the thread is about "passing named subroutine parameters"!
In our = (you, akho, me) whole discussion it's about particularly passing hash keys. If have no clue why your switching the topic now to hash values (?)
Concerning your confusion ... what's not clear about my first answer? -> Re^5: Preferred technique for named subroutine parameters?
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In the immortal words of Strother Martin, "what we've got here is failure to communicate!"
Long ago and far away, the main thread began with a question about passing named parameters as hash key/value pairs: the key is the name and the value is the parameter.
Subsequently, in Re^3: Preferred technique for named subroutine parameters? and in the context, I thought, of the question of the main thread, akho wrote "Try using a reference as a hash key ... ".
I think this statement is the root of my confusion, because I would paraphrase it as "Try using a reference as the name of a named parameter", and I could not (and still cannot) understand why one would want to do this.
Further along in Re^3: Preferred technique for named subroutine parameters? and in sub-threads stemming therefrom, and in Re^5: Preferred technique for named subroutine parameters? in particular, there is discussion, as I understand it, of just what happens to a reference when it gets stringified as a hash key and of how to avoid the ill-effects of this process. But I still cannot answer what, to me, seems the Basic Question: Why would one want to use a reference as the name of a named parameter in the first place?
Until I can either answer the BQ or clear up any confusion I may have about akho's original statement, I fear I am doomed to endless, hopeless wandering...
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