I'm not sure what everyone is so confused about...

A SCALAR is a reference to a scalar.
A REF is a reference to a reference.

A SCALAR is a reference to data.
A REF is a reference to a pointer (of sorts).

Personally, I use it all time for writing Decorator classes.

Go take a look at Object::Destroyer in CPAN, it wraps around another object containing circular references and makes sure it gets destroyed normally.

my $Destroyer = bless \$Object, 'Object::Destroyer';
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So if you Scalar::Util::reftype $Destroyer, you get 'REF'. Which is as it should be because unlike $Object, which could be B<anything> of any type, $Destroyer just points directory to the object it is Decorating