Data::Dumper returned hash with a slash - perl

Question

So I have a line of perl code that reads like this:
my $stored_value = $foo->some_function($argument);
When I do a Dumper on it:
warn Dumper $stored_value
I receive this as a result.
$VAR1 = \{
'foo' => 'abc',
'bar' => '123'
};
Now, I've seen results like this:
warn Dumper $another_hash;
$VAR1 = {
'foo' => 'bar',
'baz' => 'quux'
};
And if I wanted to get say, foo's value, I'd type in something like this:
warn Dumper $another_hash->{'foo'};
To get this as a result.
$VAR1 = 'bar';
Originally, I couldn't find anything through my Google searches, but just now, I made a little test script to play around with what I saw, and I found this out
#!/usr/bin/perl
#
use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;
sub test {
my $brother = {'Ted'};
$brother->{'Ted'} = 'brother';
return \$brother;
}
my $blah= test();
my $blah = ${$blah};
print Dumper $blah->{'Ted'};
print "\n";
Here are my results:
$VAR1 = 'brother';
I wanted to share what I had found incase someone else ran into the same thing, but what exactly did I see?
I saw how to do this in http://perldoc.perl.org/perlref.html#Using-References, but I just wanted some clarification on it.

Answer 1

I'm not sure what your question is, but your output shows that $stored_value is a reference to a scalar, which, in turn, is a reference to a hash.
It is rarely useful to keep references to scalars so this may indicate a bug.
This short program shows how the value could have been created
use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;
my $href = {
foo => 'abc',
bar => '123',
};
my $href_ref = \$href;
print Dumper $href_ref;
output
$VAR1 = \{
'bar' => '123',
'foo' => 'abc'
};
And, by the way, it is usually more useful to use Data::Dump in preference to Data::Dumper