No, it's not a dangling pointer. I'm not entirely sure references (pointers) can be made to dangle in Perl; I suppose it could be done if someone wanted to try hard enough. But Perl has automatic garbage collection.

This little demo might prove interesting:

no strict;      # just for this demo
use warnings;

my $ref         = \do{ my $anon = 42 };
my $deref       = ${ $ref };

print '$ref: '          , "$ref\n";    
print '$deref: '        , "$deref\n";    
print '$anon: '         , "$anon\n";    

__END__

Output:

Name "main::anon" used only once: possible typo at ./anon-scalar-ref-d
+emo.pl line 9.
$ref: SCALAR(0x9dbefd8)
$deref: 42
Use of uninitialized value $anon in concatenation (.) or string at ./a
+non-scalar-ref-demo.pl line 9.
$anon:
[download]

Explanation:

• Line 4 creates a variable, $anon, which is undefined at the outset, associates it with a memory location, and immediately puts 42 into that memory location. This assignment is enclosed in a do-block; so the variable goes out of scope almost as soon as it's created. However, do{} gets to act before that destruction and evaluates to the contents of the block: the variable that's about to be destroyed. The backslash takes a reference to that memory location and the variable name is destroyed. Finally, that reference is assigned to $ref.
• Line 5 dereferences $ref, finding the memory location originally associated with $anon, and assigns that value to $deref.
• Line 7 correctly prints the memory location originally associated with $anon. The memory has not been deallocated, since $ref still points to it.
• Line 8 correctly prints the value stored in $deref (42).
• Line 9 raises a compile-time warning, since the $anon in that print statement is really $main::anon and not the my $anon to which we assigned in line 4 and is now out of scope. A run-time warning is also issued about the attempt to print that undefined variable.

I encourage you to copy this demo and fool around with it until you feel more comfortable with references. Suggest changing the assignment, eliminating the do-block, taking a reference to $ref, and dropping braces in various places to force scope. (One experiment at a time!) Here's a few other changes to try:

my $ref     = \do{ @arr = (1, 2, 3) };

or:

my @arr      = (1, 2, 3);
my $ref      = \@arr;
[download]

or:
my $ref      = \(1, 2, 3);

or:
my $ref      = [1, 2, 3];

Can you guess for which of the above print @arr; will not raise a warning?

Strongly suggest you try perldoc perlref, which goes into much greater detail. Mark Dominus' perldoc perlreftut is an easy introduction.

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