How does a scalar know what it is?

In C, I can just read the K&R book and know
how everything is pretty much coded at the
machine level. At least to some extent.

But how does Perl know when you type

print $ref

for example that it is not an integer, string or what have
you?

And how does

print $num; 2 or "Two"

again at the machine level, how does perl know
what it has?




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