use warnings; use strict; use Data::Dumper; my $href = { a => 1, b => [ 2, 3, ], c => { 25 => 'y', 26 => 'z', }, d => 4, }; my $memfile; open my $mfh, '>', \$memfile or die $!; print $mfh Dumper($href); close $mfh; print $memfile;