> >> The perlref docs state "Hard references are smart--they keep track of
> >> reference counts for you, automatically freeing the thing referred to
> >> when its reference count goes to zero." My interpretation of this is
> >> that when a reference goes out of scope the memory used by
> >> the
>> The perlref docs state "Hard references are smart--they keep track of
>> reference counts for you, automatically freeing the thing referred to
>> when its reference count goes to zero." My interpretation of this is
>> that when a reference goes out of scope the memory used by
>> the referent i
Yes and no. From what I understand (and someone please correct me if
I'm wrong), the memory is freed in the sense that it is returned to
Perl, but it is not returned to your system. Once there are no
references to a variable, the memory can be overwritten by future
variables used in your program
