Hello all. I'm maintaining a Perl app which relies on a possibly incorrect behavior in Encode::decode_utf8 - references are expected to pass through unmangled. This worked fine until a recent upgrade. Observe Encode v2.08 with Perl v5.6.1: 

  $ perl -MEncode -MData::Dumper -e \
      'my $ref = Encode::decode_utf8({ foo => 1}); print Dumper($ref);
+'
  $VAR1 = {
            'foo' => 1
          };

[download]

However, Encode v2.18 with Perl v5.6.1 is not so forgiving: 

  $ perl -MEncode -MData::Dumper -e \
      'my $ref = Encode::decode_utf8({ foo => 1}); print Dumper($ref);
+'
  $VAR1 = 'HASH(0x9932180)';

[download]

So, is this a bug in Encode or a bug in my app? I'm leaning towards the latter but I thought I'd check with you before I started trying to fix it (no tests, argh!). Aside from "don't do that", can you suggest a fix?

Thanks,
-sam

PS: I also submitted this to the perl-unicode mailing-list. I'll update anything useful I get there in this node.

In reply to Encode::decode_utf8 and references by samtregar

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