Why does $r->print() dereference its arguments?

[Jeffrey W. Baker]

Apache::print() dereferences its arguments.  For example, this code:

my $foo = "bar";
$r->print(\$foo);

prints "bar" instead of the expected SCALAR(0xDEADBEEF).  Can anyone
explain the purpose of this behavior, or is it a misfeature?  In my case,
this is not the desired behavior.

-jwb