in reply to Re^2: Why do I (sometimes) get a REF ref and not a SCALAR ref?
in thread Why do I (sometimes) get a REF ref and not a SCALAR ref?

Uh, addendum. (Getting confused myself?) I should've said:

Both "SCALAR" and "REF" can be dereferenced via ${ $ref }, but only the "SCALAR" can be used as a honest scalar via that deref.

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom