I can't find anything by searching so I've resorted to posting what's probably a very simple question.

If I pass a scalar into object method, how can I determine what type of value the scalar contains (either a basic scalar or a ref to an object hash)

The only way I know how to do this is shown in this ugly code snippet:

if ($myscalar =~ /HASH/) 
{print "Is a ref to an object hash\n";}
else
{print "Is a basic scalar\n";}
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The idea of this is to pick up the HASH part of obj=HASH(0x12345678)