I don't see it as a different issue at all: in fact, this is exactly my point about the internals showing!

Hash keys accept only string values because it was a lowercase-p-perl design decision to make them string values. This didn't have to be the case! Trading off efficiency, hv_store and friends could have accepted RVs as well. The dual value issue you raise is indeed different, and more vexing in this case, because if you were to use a multi-valued SV as a hash key, confusion would probably arise about which value you wanted to be definitive (or if you wanted to require subsequent SVs to have *both* values determine the lookup). This is not a problem with references as keys.

In reply to Re^8: ref eq "REF" by gaal
in thread ref == "REF" by gaal

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