What your code implies but isn't quite explicit about is that qr() actually gives back a blessed reference to a scalar.

use Scalar::Util qw/blessed reftype/;
my $q = qr//;
print 'ref:     ', ref($q),     "\n";
print 'blessed: ', blessed($q), "\n";
print 'reftype: ', reftype($q), "\n";
__END__
ref:     Regexp
blessed: Regexp
reftype: SCALAR
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There's some more about this in How can I tell if an object is based on a regex?