Seems to me that the problem with storable is that assignment to $_[0] doesn't work as it should work, or more specifically, as it would work in a normal perl subroutine.

For instance when I read this node my first though was "Hmm, you mean

sub STORABLE_thaw {
    $_[0]= $singleton;
}
[download]

doesn't work?". And of course when I tried it, it didn't.

Anyway, it seems to me that making assignment to @_ possible in the STORABLE_freeze() hook would resolve your problem, and I think would be backwards compatible.

Ill just add the mandatory shameless plug: with Data::Dump::Streamer this is easy.

package Foo;
use Data::Dump::Streamer;

my $singleton=bless {},'Foo';
my $proxy=bless [],'Bar';
my $nope;

sub DDS_freeze {
    return if $nope;
    return ($proxy,"->DDS_thaw")
}

sub Bar::DDS_thaw {
    $singleton;
}

my @array=($singleton,$singleton,$singleton);

my $array=Dump(\@array)->Names('array')->Out();
print "$array\n---\n";
eval $array or die $@;
$nope=1;

Dump($singleton,\@array,$array)->Names(qw(singleton *array array))->Ou
+t();
__END__
$array = [
           bless( [], 'Bar' )->DDS_thaw(),
           'V: $array->[0]',
           'V: $array->[0]'
         ];
$array->[1] = $array->[0];
$array->[2] = $array->[0];

---
$singleton = bless( {}, 'Foo' );
@array = (
           $singleton,
           $singleton,
           $singleton
         );
$array = [
           $singleton,
           $singleton,
           $singleton
         ];
[download]