in reply to Mini-Tutorial: Perl's Memory Management
I'm not sure what is the intended audience of this article and the expected previous knowledge. As it is, it probably confuses more people than it helps.
The fact that a variable (or rather the allocated structure) is not freed, but rather cleared and placed in some list of preallocated structures, is an implementation detail. A transparent optimization that 99.9% of people should not even know about. What they do need to know and be sure of is that the data will not be lost if there is a reference and that the memory will not be lost if there is no reference. Whether the part of memory goes to the general hash or some other place is not really their business.
IMnsHO, there should be a big note on top that says something like "This is only for the curious, only for those that want to know what happens behind the scenes and is supposed to be hidden to the audience".
and to tell the truth I don't understand what are you trying to say in the "undef does not free a variable" section.
Jenda
Enoch was right!
Enjoy the last years of Rome.