I'm not completely sure what you are asking. What errors are you getting? I also like to pass a hash ref to subs when I can, like foo(\%hash); And yes, you can return a hash like:

return %foo; # my %hash = sub(\%hash);
return $foo; # my $hash_ref = sub(\%hash);
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Tell us what you have done, and is not working. I also suggest using 'my' and not 'local'. And redoing that part to be like:

my %arg = @_;
my $key;
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Cheers,
KM