I believe that what ikegami is driving at is that perl variables are not simple dwords and thus, while still having a binary representation, you can't simply print the dword. Rather, you always have to translate the underlying structure to any of the possible representations, including binary.
I think "driving at" is a generous way to phrase it but I see your point. I need to remind myself that Perl is a high level language and is not the same as C. I've been trying to find more detail about how Perl stores variables and I finally found perlguts. Thanks.