And its about 2 1/2 times faster too. :-) Looks like overload::StrVal is pretty slow.

The approach that I use above does have one advantage however. It doesnt pollute UNIVERSAL. Actually there is another as well, while not applicable to this situation, it also allows determining the underlying type in one call. But Scalar::Util provides a way to do that too (i havent benchmarked the two calls against the one however).

Well, at least this thread shows a couple of ways to do it. :-)

Thanks for the reply.

--- demerphq
my friends call me, usually because I'm late....