RE: My philosophy on coding (in Perl and other languages):

[turnstep]

I agree with all except for the first point. I don't know if references are "cool", but they are an excellent way to pass data around in your program efficiently, as well as a great way to build complicated data structures. (this applies to Perl, not the other languages :)

[mrmick]

I've actually seen instances where people have used references just for the sake of using them. I'm sure that using a simple reference to a scalar in the same block is adding more overhead than is necessary.

Don't get me wrong, though. I do understand the usefulness of a reference in such things as nested data structures and for passing data between subs and whatnot. I just object to using one where it's not needed.

Mick