What part of the output as Data::Dumper creates it are you missing?

If you want to nicely indent your code, pass the level as a second parameter to your routine when it recurses, and indent according to level:

sub dumpomatic {
    my( $obj, $level ) = @_;
    $level ||= 0;
    my $prefix = "  " x $level;
    ...
    print $prefix. "[";
    ...
    print $prefix. "{";
    ...
    print $prefix. $$obj;
    ...
    print $prefix. $obj;
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Also, you might want to recurse once more in the ref($obj) eq 'SCALAR' case, and not print $$obj but '\\' and then dumpomatic($$obj).

This would also handle pathologic cases like

my $ar = ['pirate', 'ninja'];
my $arr = \$ar;
my $arrr = \$arr;

dumpomatic( $arrr );
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