@widowzDoubleQuotation> perl -MData::Dumper -e "%h = ([1, 2, 3] => [1, 1, 0],[3, 4, 5] => [1, 1, 0],[1, 1, 0] => [1, 2, 1],[0, 2, 4] => [1, 2, 1],); print Dumper \%h; print map {qq!$_ is a !.ref($_).qq!\n!} keys %h" __OUTPUT__ $VAR1 = { 'ARRAY(0x1d46694)' => [ 1, 2, 1 ], 'ARRAY(0x1ca21d4)' => [ 1, 2, 1 ], 'ARRAY(0x1ca15f4)' => [ 1, 1, 0 ], 'ARRAY(0x6eb01c)' => [ 1, 1, 0 ] }; ARRAY(0x1d46694) is a ARRAY(0x1ca21d4) is a ARRAY(0x1ca15f4) is a ARRAY(0x6eb01c) is a ##undef ie is not a ref but a bare string