It's called a typeglob. To get your example to work you will need a use vars qw($z) or specify the full package of the variable: 

use strict;
my $x=2;
*main::z=\$x;
print $main::z;

[download]
Not that this will not work with a lexical $z declared with my as it has to be a package variable.

/J\

In reply to Re: Trying to understand aliasing (*var) by gellyfish
in thread Trying to understand aliasing (*var) by tphyahoo

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