I'm not sure I actually responded to the real question. I still think naming a class 'ARRAY' is begging for trouble.

But here a snippet that knows the difference: 
$aref = []; $href = {}; $sref = \""; 

my $text = 'some text';
my $ref = \$text;
my $blessed = bless($ref, 'ARRAY');

print prt_typ($_) for ( [ $aref, '$aref'],  [ $href, '$href'], 
                    [ $sref, '$sref'], [$blessed, '$blessed'], );

sub prt_typ
{
    my ( $rin, $str )  = @{$_[0]};
    print "ref($str) = ", ref($rin), "\n";
    eval { my $x = ${$rin} };
    return "$str is SCALAR\n\n" unless $@;
    eval { my %x = %{$rin} };
    return "$str is HASH\n\n" unless $@;
    eval { my @x = @{$rin} };
    return "$str is ARRAY\n\n" unless $@;
}

[download]
Results in: 
ref($aref) = ARRAY
$aref is ARRAY

ref($href) = HASH
$href is HASH

ref($sref) = SCALAR
$sref is SCALAR

ref($blessed) = ARRAY
$blessed is SCALAR

[download]



Bob Niederman, http://bob-n.com

In reply to Re: Re: Determining the true type of a reference by bobn
in thread Determining the true type of a reference by Mr. Muskrat

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