Why's that? It could have worked just fine if ref had returned SCALAR in this case.

In fact, there's only place in Dumper.pm where REF is mentioned at all. Here's what it says:

if ($realtype eq 'SCALAR' || $realtype eq 'REF')

Clearly, Dumper would have lived just fine with "a reference is just a scalar" semantics.

In reply to Re^4: ref eq "REF" by gaal
in thread ref == "REF" by gaal

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