ref

ref

ref EXPR

ref

Returns a non-empty string if EXPR is a reference, the empty string otherwise. If EXPR is not specified, $_ will be used. The value returned depends on the type of thing the reference is a reference to.

Builtin types include:

SCALAR
ARRAY
HASH
CODE
REF
GLOB
LVALUE
FORMAT
IO
VSTRING
Regexp

You can think of ref as a typeof operator.

if (ref($r) eq "HASH") {
    print "r is a reference to a hash.\n";
}
unless (ref($r)) {
    print "r is not a reference at all.\n";
}

The return value LVALUE indicates a reference to an lvalue that is not a varia