If you s/Perl_croak/Perl_warner/ in the patches above then you can make it a warning, rather than a fatal. Then you can install a signal handler to deal with it as desired. Nothing should break, although things might get a bit noisy. 

Perl_warner( aTHX_ WARN_SYNTAX, "Stringified reference\n" );

/* or you could make references REALLY strict ;-) */
if ( PL_hints & HINT_STRICT_REFS )
    Perl_croak( aTHX_ "Stringification of reference disallowed\n" );

[download]

It looks like it is pretty easy to add a new item to strict as well. *Untested* there appear to be only 3 modifications required. The PL_hints var contains a number of hints set at compile/runtime. The hints are accessed via HINT_ constants set in perl.h There are plenty of spare mask bits. 0x04 is documented as unused so you could 

/* in perl.h with the rest of the HINT_ defines */

+ #define HINT_STRICT_STRINGIFY       0x00000004

/* in sv.c as noted by xmath */

+ if ( PL_Hints & HINT_STRICT_STRINGIFY )
+    Perl_croak(aTHX_ "Stringification of reference disallowed");

# in strict.pm

    my %bitmask = (
+   stringify => 0x00000004,
    refs => 0x00000002,
    subs => 0x00000200,
    vars => 0x00000400
    );
    
    sub bits {
        my $bits = 0;
        foreach my $s (@_){ $bits |= $bitmask{$s} || 0; };
        $bits;
    }
    
    sub import {
        shift;
-       $^H |= bits(@_ ? @_ : qw(refs subs vars));
+       $^H |= bits(@_ ? @_ : qw(refs subs vars stringify));
    }
    
    sub unimport {
        shift;
-       $^H &= ~ bits(@_ ? @_ : qw(refs subs vars));
+       $^H &= ~ bits(@_ ? @_ : qw(refs subs vars stringify));
    }

[download]

As you can see you could leave strict alone and just doe $^H |= 0x00000004 to set it.

cheers

tachyon

In reply to Re^2: How to prevent references from stringifying? by tachyon
in thread How to prevent references from stringifying? by diotalevi

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