Hi, I am relatively new to perl and now I am struggling with a very nasty and persistant problem, which already took me more than a day without any progress. No experienced Perl programmers in sight...... My problem: Given this piece of code: 
my $recref = $dbh->
    selectall_hashref("SELECT * FROM DSA_RECORD 
       WHERE file_name = '$file_name'", 'RECORD_NAME');
die unless $recref;

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and the following content of $recref: 
.-> HASH(0x110916be8)
   'DATA' => HASH(0x110916a98)
      'FIELD_DELIMITER' => '<-->'
      'FILE_NAME' => 'SCRAMBLETEST2.CSV'
      'RECORD_NAME' => 'DATA'
      'RECORD_SELECTOR' => '^1'
      'SECTION_NAME' => undef

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How can I put the contents of FIELD_DELIMITER in a scalar? So in the end I need a scalar ($fieldsep) with '<-->' as contents. My impression was : 
$recname='DATA';
$fieldsep = $recref->{$recname}->{'FIELD_DELIMITER'};

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but this results in error : 
Use of uninitialized value in print .....

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Please can someone help me, I am getting frustrated. Thanks in advance

In reply to How to retrieve element in hash? by MadDogSailor

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