Since the chatterbox answer did not solve my problem, I'll ask here.

I'm doing this in perl 5.22 without any problem. hash is a hash of hashes. It looks like this:

a: key1 value1 value2 value3 value4

b: Key2 value5 value6 value7 value8

The code looks like this:

 combine(%hash{$key})

sub combine {

my (%params) = @_;

my ($key, @value) = %params;

print "This is the key $key\n";
}
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This work fine in perl version 5.22 but in perl 5.8.4 it gives me a syntax error and it says this:

syntax error at script.pl line 166, near "%hash{"
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If I try to use a $ instead of a % like it was suggested in the chatterbox, the subroutine spits out:

This is the key ARRAY(0X327060)
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How can I make this work in version 5.8.4 or is it impossible? Thanks