Sorry, I'm lost. Either I'm not understanding you, or you're not understanding me, or most likely both :)

The function ref is used to determine if its argument is a reference: if ref returns a true value, then its argument is a reference to something, right?

As an added bonus, it tells you what that reference is referring to. Therefore the following code makes everyone happy, right? 

#!perl -l
my $s = "foo";        # a scalar
print ref($s);        # prints nothing: $s is a scalar, not a ref
my $sr = \$s;         # a reference to a scalar
print ref($sr);       # prints SCALAR
my %h;                # a hash
print ref(%h);        # prints nothing: %h is a hash, not a ref
my $hr = \%h;         # a reference to a hash
print ref($hr);       # prints HASH
my $hrr = \$hr;       # a reference to a reference to a hash
print ref($hrr);      # prints REF

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So the precise meaning of REF is "a reference to a reference (to anything - sorry, it only goes one level deep)"

--
edan

In reply to Re^5: ref eq "REF" by edan
in thread ref == "REF" by gaal

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