Win32::OLE objects aren't copies of the foreign objects. If they were copies, you couldn't affect the remote objects. Each Win32::OLE object is an interface to a remote objects.

Any fetch from the referenced hash results in a get from the remote object.

Any change to the referenced hash results in a set in the remote object.

And yes, you are doing repeated fetches.

I suspect I'm not understanding how Data::Dumper works.

It works much like your code, except it doesn't print anything. The output is placed in a string, which is returned when it's done.

Okay. I can see that now. But.. I'm still at a loss for how to avoid the infinite loop while enumerating all the properties. Any advice?

Trying to avoid looping entirely might not be possible. I don't see anything in Win32::OLE that would help uniquely identify an object, and that would be required to avoid looping.

You could put limits on your looping (depth, time, number of objects visited, etc). Doing a breadth-first traversal (rather than a depth-first traversal) will make it easier to produce good results while adding limits.

sub depth_first {
   my ($n) = @_;
   for ($n->children()) {
      depth_first($_);
   }
}

sub breadth_first {
   my @todo = @_;
   while (@todo) {
      my $n = shift(@todo);
      push @todo, $n->children();
   }
}
[download]