Once you "stringify" a reference, you have fundamentally changed the nature of the data that the scalar refers to. It's now a string, not a reference. As for your second question, no, you can not get at the data once associated with the reference. You play around with Devel::Pointer, but that shouldn't be used for anything serious.

You also asked if the object the reference pointed two was destroyed after the interpolation. The answer is "no". Interpolating a reference does not affect the reference count, nor does assigning the interpolation affect it.

Cheers,
Ovid

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