Thanks, folks, this is all very interesting. I also found that Lexical::Alias works for this. 
use Lexical::Alias ('alias');
my $ref = { a => 'b', c => 'd' };
my %hash; alias %{$ref}, %hash;
print $ref->{'a'}; $hash{'a'} = 'e'; print $ref->{'a'};

[download]
Yields: 
$ perl alias.pl
b
e

[download]
The funny ordering, which goes against the common syntax in shells for the alias statement, got to me the first time. Nevertheless, these non modular solutions were what I wanted to know about.

Cheers

In reply to Re: Alias $hashref referent to a hash by hlen
in thread Alias $hashref referent to a hash by hlen

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