My guess would be that your doing:

print @cons_block;
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and not seeing anything since it's actually doing:

print FILEHANDLE @cons_block;
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Remember that print defaults to STDOUT because it is the default selected filehandle. To get around this, be specific:

print STDOUT @cons_block;
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If it's not the case, perhaps you can share more of the code you use to test the data in @cons_block.

- danboo