I wrote: >Dave Mitchell wrote: >> =@foo >> =%foo > >This seems more confusing than it's worth, with the implicit >enreferencement. Further thought: I'd be OK with a similar shorthand that made the enreferencement explicit. So, accepting "=" for the purposes of this illustration, "=\@foo" would be shorthand for "(foo=>\@foo)". Probably only permit one reference deep, but probably permit it on scalars, subs, and globs, not just on arrays and hashes. Matching syntax should be available in signatures: "foo=>\@bar" would be the syntax for an argument named "foo" that has to be an array ref and results in the lexical named "@bar" being aliased to that array, then "=\@foo" would be signature shorthand for "foo=>\@foo". -zefram