#!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; use warnings; use feature 'state'; use Data::Dumper; $Data::Dumper::Deparse=1; our %data; our $VAR1; sub insert { my ($name,$href)=@_; $href->{$name}=$href->{'nextID'}->(); print $name," => ",$href->{$name},"\n"; } sub init_data { %data=( nextID => sub { state $n=100; $n++; print "\$n is now $n\n"; return $n; } ); } init_data(); print "Working with the original:\n\n"; insert(a => \%data); insert(b => \%data); insert(c => \%data); my $dump=Dumper(\%data); print "\nData::Dumper output:\n\n"; print "$dump\n"; print "\nWorking with the original again:\n\n"; insert(d => \%data); print "\nWorking with the re-evaluated Data::Dumper output:\n\n"; eval $dump; die $@ if $@; insert(d => $VAR1);