note blazar I take your point wrt <EM>CODE</EM> symrefs, and in fact I upvoted your post. OTOH in <EM>my</EM> experience I fully agree with the widespread consensus that symrefs in general are bad. Not to say that I do not use them myself when I do want to manipulate the symbol table, but that's a whole different story. In most standard situations in which newbies would (naively) like to use symrefs, real refs would only require a moderate amount of more typing, and if you're under [cpan://strict], actually less, for you have to say <C>no strict 'refs'</C> then. So, all in all, they should be advised against doing so until they are knowledgeable enough to know <EM>when</EM> it would be the case. 471058 471394