I don't understand what is going on in the following code. Service1 comes out as I expect with an array of email addresses. I expected Service2 to look the same but instead it gets a reference to service1 which is completely puzzling to me. I want to be able to add more addresses to the email lists individually for each service later on. I don't want the lists connected in any way.

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use warnings;

use Data::Dumper;

my @maintainers = qw/ worker@company.com manager@company.com /;

my %services = (
    service1 => { email => \@maintainers },
    service2 => { email => \@maintainers },
);

print Data::Dumper->Dump( [ \%services ], [qw/*services/] );

exit 0;

[download]
Output: 
%services = (
   'service1' => {
      'email' => [
                  'worker@company.com',
                  'manager@company.com'
                 ]
   },
   'service2' => {
      'email' => $services{'service1'}{'email'}
   }
);

[download]
UPDATE: Thanks for all the replys, they did solve my problem though I am still puzzled as to why I got a reference to the hash value 'email' => $services{'service1'}{'email'} rather than a reference to say 'email' => $maintainers[0];

In reply to Putting an array into a hash gives an unexpected reference to the hash itself. by polarbear

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