in reply to string as a HASH ref

Because of your 'use strict' pragma; try this instead:
for my $n (@nm1) { print "\n$n:"; no strict 'refs'; for my $m (keys %{$n}) { printf "\t%3s: %-8s", $m, ${$n}{$m}; } }

and then take a look at perldoc perlref (search for strict).