References
Standard Perl scalars can now be used to refer to other data types. References act much like pointers in C. In the general sense, they simply refer to other data types. When a reference is blessed into a package, it becomes a Perl Object, and can be used to invoke the methods of its package (or class), as well as to access the instance variables of the class, something akin to C++ references.
Because we'll explore the references in depth later in this chapter, I'll defer most of the examples, and a complete description of them until that time. I'll also explain how the bless() operator works at that time. The reference datatype is also used extensively in the examples in this book.