that seems to have no effect. I had already tried it (see the comment in the code) but i tried it again, both with and without '= {}' to see what would happen.

the only interesting effect is that when I use 'my %hash' i get 'Global symbol "$hash" requires explicit package name...' and when i use 'my $hash' i get 'Global symbol "%hash" requires explicit package name...'. just weird.