use 5.010; use strict; use warnings; my @a=('abc',1); given (@a) { when (/abc/ ) { print '/abc/'."\n" ;continue} when ("abc" ) { print "abc\n" ;continue} #when (1 ) { print "#\n" ;continue} when (['abc',1]) { print "copy\n" ;continue} when (\@a ) { print "self\n" } } print "as it should be: ",@a~~/abc/;