Perhaps ref() should return an overloaded string that returns true when compared to both the underlying reference type and the class owning the object?
Why? That's what UNIVERSAL::isa() is for. Or should the return value from ref() be an overloaded string that returns true when compared to the underlying reference type, or the class owning the object, or any of the super classes of the class owning the object? That seems an unnecessarily complicated solution to a problem that has already been solved.
