The behavior you are using is discussed in Using References.
Using a reference as a number produces an integer representing its storage location in memory. The only useful thing to be done with this is to compare two references numerically to see whether they refer to the same location.

My Perl Fu is not so great as to let me weigh in on whether this is the "best" method.

In reply to Re: checking reference equality by kennethk
in thread checking reference equality by perl5ever

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