I see that as a special case of copy on write. COW refers to multiple objects sharing the same data storage until one changes. Copying the pointer over shares the data storage. What's special is that it never reaches the point where copying is necessary. If you'd rather use a different word for it, pretend I used that word.

In reply to Re^5: returning large arrays from functions by ikegami
in thread returning large arrays from functions by perl5ever

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