title: How can I determine the type of a blessed reference in Perl?
body: <p>In Perl, an object is just a reference to any of the basic Perl data types that has been blessed into a particular class.  When you use the ref() function on an unblessed reference, you are told what data type the reference points to.  However, when you call ref() on a blessed reference, you are returned the name of the package that reference has been blessed into.  </p>
  
  <p>I want to know the actual underlying type of the blessed reference.  How can I determine this?</p>