Hi ,

The $ref in the sub foo where you get it and I guess , from the way you populate your hash in the sub bar , you should be getting the location by having

            sub foo {

                my $location_text = $locations('id');

            }
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The passing of hash can be through a reference too like

        sub bar {

               return \%locations;

        }

        sub foo {

              $locations = &bar($dbh);

              print "The reference returned from bar is : [$locations]
+\n";


              %location_Names = %$locations;

         }
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You can use some debugging to see the hash values in course of program like use Data::Dumper which will give you the hash's values in course of your program in tree forms itself , so that it shall be easy and helpful