How do you know what $_ really is in your program?

What you saw is the stringification, which is not necessarily the same thing. For instance:

my $x = \*FH;
print "plain glob ref: <$x>\n";
# prints: plain glob ref: <GLOB(0x1d6c660)>
open ($x, "<","somefile") or warn "error\n";
print "open FH ref: <$x>\n";
# prints: open FH ref: <GLOB(0x1d6c660)>
[download]

But if instead I use x to peek at the globref in the debugger, it looks like this:

my $x = \*FH;
x $x
# prints: 
#0  GLOB(0x1d6c408)
#   -> *main::FH
open ($x, "<","somefile") or warn "error\n";
print "open FH ref: <$x>\n";
# prints: 
0  GLOB(0x1d6c408)
   -> *main::FH
         FileHandle({*main::FH}) => fileno(6)
[download]

...which is much more interesting.

What do you get in your code?

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