If necessary you could use UNIVERSAL::isa() to check if the blessed ref is an array ref:

isa won't always work:

my $o = bless {}, 'ARRAY'; print "$o isa array" if UNIVERSAL::isa($o, 'ARRAY'); __END__ ARRAY=HASH(0x759c) isa array

When you want to know your implementation type you want reftype from Scalar::Util.

use Scalar::Util qw(reftype); my $hash_object = bless {}, 'ARRAY'; my $array_ref = [1,2,3]; my $array_object = bless [], 'Foo'; foreach ($hash_object, $array_ref, $array_object) { print "reftype of ", $_, " is ", reftype($_), "\n"; }; __END__ reftype of ARRAY=HASH(0x759c) is HASH reftype of ARRAY(0x7650) is ARRAY reftype of Foo=ARRAY(0x74b8) is ARRAY

In reply to Re^2: Report on Blessing to 'tag' an object by adrianh
in thread Report on Blessing to 'tag' an object by John M. Dlugosz

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