Tom Christiansen, the author of the well-worth reading FMTEYEWtKaPiP shows this neat function.

    sub hpush(\%@) {
        my $href = shift;       # NB: not %
        while ( my ($k, $v) = splice(@_, 0, 2) ) {
            $href->{$k} = $v;
        }
    }
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Which you could use to this

    hpush(%variables, get_page_content("names"));
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