Can I name an anonymous array in Perl?

Question

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

my $aref = [1, 2, 3];
my @a = @$aref;              # this line
$a[1] = 99;
print \"aref = @$aref\\n\";
print \"a = @a\\n\";
<         


        

Answer 1

One option is to use the Data::Alias package from CPAN.

This way you can write:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use Data::Alias qw( alias );

my $aref  = [1, 2, 3];

alias my @a = @$aref;

$a[1] = 99;
print "aref = @$aref\n";
print "a = @a\n";

A related question on SO can be found here: Assign address of one array to another in Perl possible?