i was skimming through the camel book (just revising the long forgotten things) when something struck me.....
i made a small program that creates a reference to a scalar and a hash like this

use strict;
use warnings;
my $scalar_ref=*foo{SCALAR};
print "scalar ref defined\n" if defined $scalar_ref;
#------------------------#
my hash_ref=*foo{HASH};
print "hash ref defined\n" if defined hash_ref;
__END__
output
scalar ref defined
[download]

the output is right in this case as the compiler need not see a scalar to create a reference but it needs to see a hash to create a reference.... so for this i did

use strict;
use warnings;
my $scalar_ref=*foo{SCALAR};
print "scalar ref defined\n" if defined $scalar_ref;
#------------------------#
my %hash=();
my hash_ref=*hash{HASH};
print "hash ref defined\n" if defined hash_ref;
__END__
output
Name "main::foo" used only once: possible typo at ref.pl
Name "main::hash" used only once: possible typo at ref.pl
scalar defined
[download]

now the problem is... the compiler sees that we do hv a hash existing then too the statement hash ref defined doesnt crop up..... why is that????