in reply to tainted entangled hashrefs
FYI -- Network Programming with Perl by Lincoln Stein (see the Reviews Section) has a great section on using Taint and the pitfalls thereof.
"Tainted data cannot be used in any function that affects the outside world, or Perl will die with an error message. Such functions include:
<snip>
Opening a file for writing"
etc...
He also says "every variable that such tainted data touches becomes tainted as well."
Being in the same hash does mean guilty by association.
"Nothing is sure but death and taxes" I say combine the two and its death to all taxes!