here's a little code to test a straight-up array ref, an object, and a tied array...

also, has it been blessed? might be of some interest to you.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
$|++;


package tiedarray;

use Tie::Array;
our @ISA=('Tie::StdArray');


package main;

for my $t_ref ( [], bless([]), tie(@{[]}, 'tiedarray') )
{
  if( ref $t_ref )
  {
    print q{i'm a ref}, $/;
    if( UNIVERSAL::can( $t_ref, 'isa' ) )
    {
      print q{i'm an object, too}, $/;
    }
  }
  print $/;
}
__END__
# prints:
i'm a ref

i'm a ref
i'm an object, too

i'm a ref
i'm an object, too
[download]

i don't think it's too much to test two cases if( ref $t_ref and ! UNIVERSAL::can($t_ref, 'isa') ), given the benefits.

~Particle *accelerates*