Question

I am currently learning about ‘dereferencing’ in Perl and need your help in understanding what the ‘\’ means in the line below..

$ra = \$a; 

Answer 1

See perlop.

Unary “\” creates a reference to
whatever follows it. See perlreftut
and perlref. Do not confuse this
behavior with the behavior of
backslash within a string, although
both forms do convey the notion of
protecting the next thing from
interpolation.