Brother dragonchild's example is a good one. It's not really a
question of needing them, but that they are another tool
available which let you approach problems in different ways.
Sometimes a pointerish solution - like dragonchild's - would be
easier to understand, just like sometimes an OO solution is
easier, or a functional solution is easier. I do take the point
that with pointers comes danger. It could probably be mitigated
because perl knows more about the underlying data structures
that you would be pointing at than C does - for instance, if you
increment a pointer beyond the end of a string, perl can know
that you've done that and so could automagically extend the
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