ref - Perldoc Browser

functions / ref

(source, CPAN)

You are viewing the version of this documentation from Perl 5.005_01. View the latest version

#ref EXPR

#ref

Returns a TRUE value if EXPR is a reference, FALSE 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:

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