Can I just clarify that I know the initial code is wrong!!!.

Please re-read the post and understand. For clarity, it's easiest to store the data in the format of my example. For practicality, I need to use the values in ext as keys in a new hashref, eg:

my $hashref = { 'cgi' => { icon => 'script.png',
                           description => 'Perl'
                         },
                'pm'  => { icon => 'script.png',
                           description => 'Perl'
                         },
                'pl'  => { icon => 'script.png',
                           description => 'Perl'
                         },
};
[download]

To sum up:

• why doesn't the initial example die when it should? If I change the intitial hashref to an arrayref it does die as expected.
• what's the quickest way of transforming the stored data structure to the usable format? Just being lazy and trying to avoid unecessary duplication :)

cLive ;-)

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Update: Ahh, thanks japhy :)