$ perl -wle'use Devel::Peek "SvREFCNT"; $A = "foo"; BEGIN { print SvREFCNT($::{A}) } $A = "bar"; BEGIN { print SvREFCNT($::{A}) } delete $::{A}; eval "\$A = 1; print SvREFCNT(\$::{A})"'
2
3
2