Right, well this would be true if $this->{l}{$key} were undefined (which it isn't). In fact, correct behavior for FETCH is to return undefined if $key doesn't reference a defined object.

$o{0} should be defined because ->{f}{0} is defined.

And the evals are just there to undo Data::Dump -- I'll probably switch to Storable later when all is more stable and I don't need to inspect my objects manually.

Thanks for the stab at it, tho.