Win8 Strawberry 5.8.9.5 (32) Fri 05/07/2021 19:46:25 C:\@Work\Perl\monks >perl -Mwarnings use Data::Dumper; my $hr = { qw(one uno two dos) }; my $request = "$hr\n"; # stringize a hash ref, end in newline print Dumper $request; print Dumper %$request; ^Z $VAR1 = 'HASH(0x333824) '; #### print Dumper %$request; $VAR1 = '4/8 '; #### Win8 Strawberry 5.8.9.5 (32) Fri 05/07/2021 20:03:42 C:\@Work\Perl\monks >perl -Mstrict -Mwarnings use Data::Dumper; my $hr = { qw(one uno two dos) }; my $bins = '' . %$hr; print Dumper $bins; ^Z $VAR1 = '2/8'; #### Win8 Strawberry 5.8.9.5 (32) Fri 05/07/2021 20:15:42 C:\@Work\Perl\monks >perl -Mstrict -Mwarnings my %hash = qw(one uno two dos); print '' . %hash; ^Z 2/8