Little syntax error: for hashes, you would say: my %hash = ( # your key/values ); and not, my %hash = { # your key/values }; I think

Little syntax error: for hashes, you would say: my %hash = ( # your key/values ); and not, my %hash = { # your key/values }; I think that may be one of the problems people have with Perl - the syntax gets a little whacky and it's hard, sometimes, to wrap your mind around Perl-style references. My personal way to solve this is to almost exclusively use references in complex data structures, so: my $hashref = { another_hashref => { key_name => [qw( value is an array_ref )], }, }; Is a hashref, that contains another hashref, which contains an array ref. Easy to bring up the 3rd thingy in the arrayref: print $hashref->{another_hashref}->{key_name}->[2]; #an This should be somewhat palatable to do actually, if you're slinging JSON all day.