Using { } instead of \ does the same thing

Not exactly. Consider:

#! perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;

my %hash     = ( Fred => 'Wilma', Barney => 'Betty' );
my $ref      =  \%hash;
my $copy     = { %hash };
$hash{Homer} =  'Marge';    # Alter the original hash

print "\nReference: ", Dumper($ref);
print "\nCopy:      ", Dumper($copy);
[download]

Output:

 0:10 >perl 606_SoPW.pl

Reference: $VAR1 = {
          'Homer' => 'Marge',
          'Barney' => 'Betty',
          'Fred' => 'Wilma'
        };

Copy:      $VAR1 = {
          'Barney' => 'Betty',
          'Fred' => 'Wilma'
        };

 0:10 >
[download]

A backslash \ produces a reference to the same hash, but braces { } create a reference to a new, separate, anonymous hash containing a copy of the data in the original.

Hope that helps,