in reply to Is this a reasonable data structure?

Is this really an array of hashes

No, it's a hash-of-hashes:

my %data = (
   paterman_s => { 
       title => 'Mr',
       first => 'Steve',
       last => 'Paterman',
       room => 101,
       phone => 100,
       email => 'stv@net.net',
   }, 
   # And so on
);

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Also, please watch the weird Microsoft quoting characters.

----
I wanted to explore how Perl's closures can be manipulated, and ended up creating an object system by accident.
-- Schemer

:(){ :|:&};:

Note: All code is untested, unless otherwise stated

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom