I got a little confused about that, because in the section of the perlreftut that discuss the "Arrow Rule" it says the arrow isn't necessary between two subscripts. I guess that means it's required in this case? If $reports{$year} and $reports->{$year} are different variables, and $reports->{$year} is a hash reference, then what is $reports{$year}?

In any event, I've added use strict; and your printit sub, and now the "new data" is identical to the "old data". Here's the code:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use Storable qw(lock_nstore lock_retrieve);
use strict;

my $reports;
my %reports;
my $label;

# load the file
if (-e "reporting.storable") {
    $reports = lock_retrieve("reporting.storable")
        || die "Couldn't lock_retrieve reporting.storable: $!\n";
}
$label = 'old data';
printit();

# generate some random data
for (0 .. 10) {
    my @myyears = (2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 201
+0, 2011);
    my $fiscal_year = $myyears[int(rand 9)];
    my @myquarters = ('Q1', 'Q2', 'Q3', 'Q4');
    my $qua = $myquarters[int(rand 3)];
    my @myfiles = ('foo.txt', 'bar.dat', 'bap.zip', 'baz.tgz', 'zif.do
+c', 'blu.shn', 'sng.mp3', 'zap.pif', 'fiz.pdf', 'shz.nit');
    my $filen = $myfiles[int(rand 9)];
    my @mytitles = ('fooey', 'dooey', 'looey', 'zooey', 'gooey', 'hooe
+y', 'tooey', 'pooey', 'rooey', 'blooey');
    my $title = $mytitles[int(rand 9)]; 
    my @mydescriptions = ('desc1', 'desc2', 'desc3', 'desc4', 'desc5',
+ 'desc6', 'desc7', 'desc8', 'desc9', 'desc10');
    my $description = $mydescriptions[int(rand 9)];
    
    # update the data
    $reports{$fiscal_year}{$qua}{$filen}->{title} = "$title";
    $reports{$fiscal_year}{$qua}{$filen}->{description} = "$descriptio
+n";
}
$label = 'new data';
printit();

# save the file
$reports = \%reports ;
lock_nstore ($reports, "reporting.storable") 
    || die "Couldn't lock_nstore reporting.storable: $!\n";
    
sub printit {
    
    my $year;
    my $quarter;
    my $file;
    
    # print the hash
    print "\n======== BEGIN $label =========\n";
    foreach my $year ( sort keys %{$reports} ) {
        print "$year: \n";
        foreach my $quarter(sort keys %{$reports->{$year}}){
            print "  $quarter: \n";
            foreach my $file (sort keys %{$reports->{$year}{$quarter} 
+} ) {
                print "    Filename:    $file\n";
                print "    Title:       $reports->{$year}{$quarter}{$f
+ile}{title}\n";
                print "    Description: $reports->{$year}{$quarter}{$f
+ile}{description}\n\n";
          }
        }
    }
    print "\n======== END $label =========\n";
}
[download]

Still stumped! I'm going to write another version using Data::Dumper just for fun, unless anyone sees any caveats with that approach for this data structure, but I'd also really like to know how to do this with Storable.

Thanks for your help!