I totally understand your question, as I was struggling to do this kind of things in Perl 5 some time ago.  I hear that it&#x27;s been made easier in Perl 5 lately, though.  In any case, it&#x27;s indeed much easier in Perl 6, as in Perl 6, there is no more references, or rather, everything is a reference.<p>so for instance a dictionary of dictionaries or arrays looks like:<p><pre><code>    my %dict = {
       &#x27;foo&#x27; =&gt; {
                    &#x27;bar&#x27; =&gt; [ &#x27;an&#x27;, &#x27;array&#x27; ],
                    &#x27;a deeply nested word&#x27; =&gt; &quot;tada!&quot;
               },
       &#x27;an empty dict&#x27; =&gt; {},
       &#x27;an empty array&#x27; =&gt; []
    };
    say %dict{&#x27;foo&#x27;}{&#x27;a deeply nested word&#x27;};  # tada!</code></pre>