If coded as is (below), the sub works;

Cool cool.

There's a lot of things to say about the way Perl passes arguments into a subroutine through this weird @_ variable. But don't you just love it how it allows you to write stuff like my %hArgs = (default1 => "foo", default2=> "bar", @_); ... inside a sub, and then call that sub with ConfigRead default2 => "banana juice", extra => "new key/value pair w00t w00t"; and it just works and you preserve one default setting, override another, and even introduce a third setting? It's things like that make adore this language.

So thumbs up to you, KimberTLE, for coming up with a solution that works. And I don't mean that sarcastically, I am indeed sincere. So... is there a question?