Thanks Rob, I am indeed pretty conversant with that stuff. The aim here is to avoid writing my own dumping module just to get around the lack of a single feature in the standard one - there is a forest of them already on CPAN, it seems very likely there would already be one ideal for my needs (or needing at most minor topiary).

See also my update on the root post where I describe what I'm currently experimenting with via Data::Printer: that is working at least well enough to let me get further with the code I was originally trying to write.