You keep posting examples with completely broken and unusable data, which makes it nearly impossible to figure out what and why you're trying to do.

Here's what I expect you're trying to do, but it's really a crap shoot here:

use warnings;
use strict;

my $aref = [
      {
        BIRTH        => "11/04/2014",
        CODE => 4,
        NAME      => "JOHN D.",
        NUMBER      => 1234,
      },
      {
        BIRTH        => "11/04/2014",
        CODE => 4,
        NAME      => "Mike D.",
        NUMBER      => 1234,
      },
];

for my $block (@$aref){
    my $number = $block->{NUMBER};
    print "$number\n";
}

[download]

Why don't you state your overall objectives for the larger project, instead of repeated posts with code that won't compile and data that can't be used? Then, we might be able to give examples of long-term data structure, and how to use it.

Update: if you do have an aoaoh, here's an example of how to get the NUMBER from the 1st hash in the 2nd array element:

use warnings;
use strict;


my $arefs = [
    [
      {
        BIRTH        => "11/04/2014",
        CODE => 4,
        NAME      => "JOHN D.",
        NUMBER      => 1234,
      },
    ],
    [
      {
        BIRTH        => "11/04/2014",
        CODE => 4,
        NAME      => "Mike D",
        NUMBER      => 5555,
      },
    ],
];

print "$arefs->[1][0]{NUMBER}\n";

[download]

In reply to Re: Accessing a hash element by stevieb
in thread Accessing a hash element by Anonymous Monk

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