I didn't mean sigils as such but the whole duality of arrays and array_refs and the resulting grammatical overhead.

For instance:

If $arr was always an alias of \@arr and vice versa, you'd still have sigils but way less headache.

> What I am hearing is a lot about classes

I can imagine that, because Perl has a zoo of OO models.

But I think most people already get frustrated at dereferencing before reaching OO.

YMMV

Anyway, I'd love to have one of those mission "impossible" legacy projects, just to prove what a real expert can achieve by cleaning it up.