You have:

    $sn = $entry3;
    $$sn = new DEVICE;
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and then say:

    > I think the error is bogus, and that it somehow doesn't
    > like the anon reference thingie.
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That's not an anonymous reference. You've set $sn equal to the value of $entry3 and are then trying to use that value as a reference. That's not going to work, because it's not a reference.

Try this:

    $entry->[3] = new DEVICE;
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Assuming that $entry is an array reference. Isn't it, the first time you tried to use it?

In addition: you haven't shown us all of your code, but if you're just looping through data and creating a new DEVICE for each line of the data, then adding that to an array... are you by any chance using an incremented loop counter to hold your array index? :)

If so, you should try this instead:

    push @$entry, new DEVICE;
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which eliminates the need for the "synthetic" array size indicator. For more on this sort of thing, see Mark-Jason Dominus's Return of Program Repair Shop and Red Flags.