I am building an array of hashes...can't figure out how to access the hash elements. ...   push (@AOH, %hash);

I'm afraid you're not. What you are doing here is adding the content of your hash (keys and values) alike, in the array, not the hash itself. What you want to do is push a reference to the hash into your array. push (@AOH, \%hash). Then you can simply call $AOH[0]{Key}

You should read perldsc on that point, and the part about arrays of hashes

Upgrade : I saw that you wrote your own answer before I could finish mine, but it might still be useful for other people, and the links I gave you could still be of some interest to you too.