Just as a sidenote to the advice already given by the others, be sure to note the use of @ to do the slice. EVEN WHEN IT'S A HASH SLICE.

This is because technically, the slice is a list, and in Perl we use @ to indicate a list.

A short example:

# array slice
@arr = qw(zero one two three);
@arr[1,2] = (2,3)

# hash slice
%hash = (
    one   => 1,
    two   => 2,
    three => 3,
    four  => 4,
);
@hash{'two','three'} = qw(two three);
[download]

This is done without references, so be sure to dereference your hash ref in your code.

Hope that helps.

---

Amel
This is my cool %SIG