Thanks for the reply, moritz! using your method i'm no longer getting a ref of @a, but now i get refs of the individual arrays instead. it still won't work because if i change the AoA in $h{"1"}, the AoA in $h{"2"} will also be modified.

{
          '1' => [
                   [
                     'a1',
                     1,
                     1,
                     1
                   ],
                   [
                     'a2',
                     2,
                     2,
                     2
                   ]
                 ],
          '2' => [
                   $VAR1->{'1'}[0],
                   $VAR1->{'1'}[1]
                 ]
        }
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