And you can use the Dump method so the dump shows the actual variable name instead of $VAR1:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;
use Cwd;
my $dir = getcwd();
print Data::Dumper->Dump([$dir],[qw(*dir)]),"\n";
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Update: as well as what jkahn said, of course =]