How do I turn an array returned from a function (like split) into an array reference?

Question

Consider this code:

@tmp = split(/\s+/, "apple banana cherry");
$aref = \@tmp;

Besides being inelegant, the above code is fragile. Say I follow it with this line:

@tmp = split(/\s+/, "dumpling eclair fudge");

Now $$aref[1] is "eclair" instead of "banana".

How can I avoid the use of the temp variable?

Conceptually, I'm thinking of something like

$aref = \@{split(/\s+/, "apple banana cherry")};

Answer 1

You could do this if you want an array-ref:

my $aref = [ split(/\s+/, "apple banana cherry") ];