The rest of the name tells you the particular value to which it refers. Most often, it consists of a single identifier, that is, a string beginning with a letter or underscore, and containing letters, underscores, and digits. #### my %bad = ( '12598' => {}, # data about bad sequence '19203' => {}, # data about other bad sequence ) #### $12598{'foo'} = 'bar'; # wrong and illegal #### $bad{'12598'}{'foo'} = 'bar';