Is the same true if you use an intermediate variable - does it get aliased, or merely assigned?

It's weirder than that. Check this out:

my $one = "wired";
for my $two (grep 1, substr($one, 1, 3)) {
  sub { $_[0] = "eir" } -> ($two);
}
print $one;
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I'm using the lvalueness of the grep, foreach, substr, and argument passing there. With a little more work, you can add the lvalueness of slices and values as well. {grin}

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker