Little syntax error: for hashes, you would say:<p><pre><code>    my %hash = (
    # your key&#x2F;values
    );
</code></pre>
and not,<p><pre><code>    my %hash = {
   # your key&#x2F;values
    };
</code></pre>
I think that may be one of the problems people have with Perl - the syntax gets a little whacky and it&#x27;s hard, sometimes, to wrap your mind around Perl-style references.<p>My personal way to solve this is to almost exclusively use references in complex data structures, so:<p><pre><code>		my $hashref = { 
		another_hashref =&gt; { 
			key_name =&gt; [qw(
				value
				is
				an 
				array_ref
			)], 
		},
	};
</code></pre>
Is a hashref, that contains another hashref, which contains an array ref. Easy to bring up the 3rd thingy in the arrayref:<p><pre><code>    print $hashref-&gt;{another_hashref}-&gt;{key_name}-&gt;[2]; #an
</code></pre>
This should be somewhat palatable to do actually, if you&#x27;re slinging JSON all day.