brassmon_k ... Instead of starting with something as complex as your problem seems to be, why not start with something really simple and actually understand how Perl does multi-level data structures? You seem to want to eat your cake and have it, too.

Perl understanding does not come very quickly, nor very easily. You have to be willing to work at it, just like anything else. Perl has a very deceiptfully easy learning curve, but it still has all the complexities of a C or a LISP.

Another thing, and this is much more nitpicky - I would never classify someone who didn't understand multi-level data structures as intermediate in any language, especially not Perl. Look at it as your graduation-from-beginner test. You don't even need to understand how references work (though it helps, in the long run). Look back at my answer and try to understand it.

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