6/1     Writing a hash/array/scalar traversing function. How do I tell
        if a variable passed to me is a hash, scalar, or array
        in Perl? Thanks.
        \_ You can't, unfortunately.  If you really want to do that, you
           have to pass a reference instead.  --mconst
           \_ Ah I got it. I need to dereference a variable, then
              do a ref($var) to see its type. THANKS SO MUCH mconst.
        \_ Guessing that you really mean you were passed a reference, call ref()
           on it, which will give you undef (it was just a scalar), 'ARRAY',
           'HASH', 'SCALAR', etc, meaning it was a reference to one of those.
           --dbushong
        \_ Welcome to perl, the worst of all typing worlds
           \_ How about PHP, where the only way to find out if something is
              an array or a hash is heuristically (i.e. "are the first few
              keys ordered ints starting from 0?")
              \_ And to be fair, ruby does some amazingly annoying things
                 with arrays as return values.
                 \_ Really?  Like what?  I've always found ruby's behavior
                    w.r.t. arrays to be as convenient as possible while still
                    completely flexible.  --dbushong