G'day betmatt,

"... do exactly the same in Perl using a ref command in conjunction with '=='."

Depending on context, it may be worthwhile using ref to ensure you're actually comparing references; however, it's not needed for the comparison.

Instead of ==, I'd probably choose eq and do the comparison test like this:

$ref1 eq $ref2
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Here's a short example:

$ perl -E '
    my @x = ({}, []);
    my $y = $x[0];
    say for @x, $y;
    say $_->[0] eq $_->[1] ? "Y" : "N" for [@x], [$x[0], $y];
'
HASH(0x600003a70)
ARRAY(0x600076050)
HASH(0x600003a70)
N
Y
[download]