Evening! I'm trying to append to a scalar using a reference. I'm doing the same thing for an array which works, but this doesn't - isntead, it seems to have passed the reference name to my variable: 
sub file_expansion {
        my ($output, $input) = @_; 
        my $test = $output;     # For testing whether I need to append
+ to an array or a scalar#
        while (<@$input>) { 
                if (-e $_) {
                        open (FILE, "< $_");
                        my @lines = <FILE>;
                        foreach my $line (@lines) {
                                $_ = $test;
                                if (/SCALAR/) {
                                        $output .= $line;
                                        
                                }
                                else {
                                        push @$output, $line;
                                }
                        }
                }
                else {
                        print "<<ERROR: File \'$_\' doesn't exist or c
+an't be read.>>";
                }
        }
}

@temp_fyle = "/home/monkey/list_of_commands"; (looks like below:
interface blah 
ip address 1.2.3.4 255.255.255.255
)

&file_expansion(\$template,\@temp_fyle);

[download]
Ok, what I'd expect is that printing $output within the sub will result in the contents of the file being in there. What I'm finding, however, is that I get something like "SCALAR(0x828c810)interface blah ip address 1.2.3.4 255.255.255.255" And after exiting the loop, $template is empty. Obviously what's happening is that I've not referenced it properly and the $output variable actually has the scalar reference as its value rather than being a reference to the original scalar. What have I done wrong?
toeslikefingers.com - because you've got too much time on your hands

In reply to referencing question by bonoboy

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