ref

NAME

ref - find out the type of thing being referenced

SYNOPSIS

ref EXPR

DESCRIPTION

Returns a TRUE value if EXPR is a reference, FALSE otherwise. The value returned depends on the type of thing the reference is a reference to. Builtin types include:

REF SCALAR ARRAY HASH CODE GLOB

If the referenced object has been blessed into a package, then that package name is returned instead. You can think of ref() as a typeof() operator.

if (ref($r) eq "HASH") { print "r is a reference to an associative array.\n"; } if (!ref ($r) { print "r is not a reference at all.\n"; }