As another method, Data::Dumper works quite well in my shop and we are regularly storing very complex data structures. It works something like this, where $donor is a reference to a complex structure

sub Clone {
    my $donor = shift;
    my $file = shift;
    my ( $dna, $clone );

    local $Data::Dumper::Indent = 0;   # It will be eval'd, we don't n
+eed pretty
    local $Data::Dumper::Purity = 1;   # make sure all code is present
    local $Data::Dumper::Terse = 1;    # makes the eval work well
    local $Data::Dumper::Deepcopy = 1; # tell Dumper our intent

    #---
    # Interestingly enough, Dumper will embed the call to bless in the
+ DNA.
    # Which makes this whole analogy really quite accurate and somehow
+ strange
    #---
    $dna   = Dumper( $donor );
    #---
    # At this point, the data structure in $donor is stringified
    # into $dna.  $dna can be written to file or whatever.
    # To get it back out, do something like what follows - 
    # this is a cloning function, after all.
    #---
    $clone = eval $dna;
    return $clone;
}
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mikfire