http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=139271


in reply to Is this a symbolic reference?

Now to really get your shorts in a twist:

goto &{"foo"}

Clearly has the form of a symref, and should be caught by strict -- but it's not. This was reported by me and mjd to p5p a while ago and it's an intentional exception to stricture. References: my report, mjd's report of nearly the same thing, the eventual explanation. The short version is that strict refs only applies to $%@* things, not &.