While trying to grok that code I stumbled on an interesting different approach... Its not suitable for building a tree from many lists, but is suitable for building a HOH out of a single list:

use Data::Dumper;
my @keys = qw( this that those );

my $node='value';
$node={$_=>$node} foreach reverse @keys;

print Dumper $node;
__END__
$VAR1 = {
          'this' => {
                      'that' => {
                                  'those' => 'value'
                                }
                    }
        };
[download]

--- demerphq
my friends call me, usually because I'm late....

Why not:

my @chain = qw/a b c d/;
my %hash;

sub foo(\%@){
    local $_ = shift;
    $_ = $_->{scalar shift} = {} while @_;
}

foo %hash => @chain;
[download]

? it's becoming obfuscated ...

_____________________________________________________
Jeff[japhy]Pinyan: Perl, regex, and perl hacker, who'd like a job (NYC-area)
s++=END;++y(;-P)}y js++=;shajsj<++y(p-q)}?print:??;