With a hashref, this looks a lot different and is a lot more convoluted*:

"\$.${\$row->{name}}ence"
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Uh, no. The ref/def thing is unnecessary, since the hash deref syntax alone will tell the parser where to break:

pdl> $row->{name} = 'sent'
pdl> p "\$.${\$row->{name}}ence"
$.sentence
pdl> p "\$.$row->{name}ence"
$.sentence
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