I think the address is not used as an address, but as a unique identifier. It allows the serializing (dumping) of structures such as the one below without cloning substructures referenced twice on load. 
$ar = [];
$structure = [ $ar, $ar ];

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In reply to Re: XML::Dumper - Dump to file cross-server safe? by ikegami
in thread XML::Dumper - Dump to file cross-server safe? by Anonymous Monk

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