This replaces Simon Cozens' Devel::Pointer module with something that uses only pure perl (assuming you have at least version 5.8.1). There are a few differences: you can dereference more things than D::P allows (like code references), deref returns a reference to the dereffed thing and not an alias, the unsmash_* functions aren't specific to the type of object being dereferenced - they do the right thing regardless.

#!/home/josh/perl5.8.1/bin/perl
Devel::Pointer->import;

my $source = "a secret";
my $address = address_of( $source );
if ( deref( $address ) == \ $source ) {
    print "Ok: ${deref($address)}\n";
} else {
    print "Mismatch: ${deref($address)}\n";
}

package Devel::Pointer;
use 5.8.1;
use strict;
use warnings FATAL => 'all';
use base 'Exporter';
use B;
use vars qw(@SVCLASSNAMES @EXPORT);
BEGIN {
    @EXPORT = qw(address_of
                  deref
                  unsmash_sv
                  unsmash_av
                  unsmash_hv
                  unsmash_cv);
    @SVCLASSNAMES =
        map "B::$_",
        qw( NULL
            IV
            NV
            RV
            PV
            PVIV
            PVNV
            PVMG
            BM
            PVLV
            AV
            HV
            CV
            GV
            FM
            IO );
}

sub address_of {
    return @_ ? 0 + \ $_[0] : ();
}

BEGIN {
    for (qw(unsmash_sv
            unsmash_av
            unsmash_hv
            unsmash_cv
            deref)) {
        no strict 'refs';
        *$_ = sub {
            my $address = shift;
            my $o = bless \ $address, 'B::SV';
            my $type = $o->SvTYPE;
            bless $o, $SVCLASSNAMES[$type];
            return $o->object_2svref;
        };
    }
}

1;

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In reply to Devel::Pointer in pure perl by diotalevi

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