[ryl00]

This is one part (of many) of perl that I like, that it exposes the pointer-y parts to the programmer (to abuse :))

    # hash
    my %a = ( 'one' => 1, 'two' => 2 );
    my %b = %a;

    $b{ 'two' } = 99;

    # prints 2
    print $a{ 'two' }, "\n";

    # reference to hash
    my $a = { 'one' => 1, 'two' => 2 };
    my $b = $a;

    $b->{ 'two' } = 99;

    # prints 99
    print $a->{ 'two' }, "\n";

[deckard1]

The real difference is Perl has typed variables, such as hashes or arrays, which other languages typically do not. Which does make it convenient when you need to clone the object, such as "%b = %a" example. Perl borrows the sigil concept from Bash and other shells (which makes sense, given the historical context of Perl). The only other language I know of that uses sigils in such manner is BASIC. Other languages, such as Ruby or Common Lisp, use them as syntactic convention rather than as a feature that the compiler/interpreter understands.[1]

Most dynamic languages expose the data as references. In fact, the one thing that trips up JavaScript developers (especially in React) is that they do not understand how references work. I see senior and lead developers inadvertently doing mutation all the time. Or getting incredibly paranoid that two identical strings, for example, do not equal each other in the strictest sense in JS. They also throw in memoization everywhere due to their fundamental lack of understanding.

You can always tell the developers that do not have C/C++/Pascal experience.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigil_(computer_programming)