Maybe you can use one of the B:: modules. I have only used them a couple of times, but it seems like they do the reflection that you are looking for. You end up in the internals because that's where the structure is.

For example:

use B::XPath;

sub some_function
{
  my $struct =
  [
    'whaa!',
    undef,
    [
      undef,
      undef,
      {
        foo => 3
      }
    ],
    {
      bar => 'baz'
    },
  ];
}

my $node = B::XPath->fetch_root( \&some_function );

print_children($node, 0);
sub print_children
{
  my $node= shift;
  my $indent= shift;
  foreach my $child ($node->get_children())
  {
    print " " for (0..$indent);
    print $child->get_name()."=".$child."\n";
    $indent++;
    print_children($child, $indent);
    $indent--;
  }
}
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