You can't, at least not easily. Sure, you could write some XS code that puts the address back into the RV field of a reference, but you're not meant to mess with addresses like in C.  It's asking for trouble, because Perl manages memory via reference counts1. And what if the item your stringified "reference" points to no longer exists when you dereference it?

What is the real problem you're trying to solve, for which you would need this functionality?

___

1 those reference counts are automatically incremented/decremented as needed as long as you use normal Perl references, but they're not updated for stringified references.

In reply to Re: dereferencing a stringfied referent by almut
in thread dereferencing a stringfied referent by clueless newbie

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