Following #2 in Basic debugging checklist, I would recommend printing out the hash after every time you assign to a key or subkey of your %metrics hash. Because it's a complex structure, use Data::Dumper, as:

use Data::Dumper;
...
# after some assignment like
    $metrics{$product}{$date} = $day;
    print STDERR Dumper \%metrics;
    $metrics{$product}{$date}{$hour}{$user} = $val;
    print STDERR Dumper \%metrics;

[download]

as a one liner, with hardcoded values, for the first assignment and print:

C:\usr\local\share\PassThru\perl>perl -MData::Dumper -le "$metrics{pro
+duct}{today} = 'Wed'; print STDERR Dumper \%metrics"
$VAR1 = {
          'product' => {
                         'today' => 'Wed'
                       }
        };

[download]

You might then notice that at the first print, the value of the 'today' key is a string, 'Wed', and not another { nested => hash }. With a string as the value of {today}, you cannot take another subkey (like {today}{12}), because strings don't have subkeys. I think you need to rethink your data structure. Maybe show us in the Data::Dumper-like notation printed above, what you do want your data to look like when you're done, and we can help you organize your data into that format.

In reply to Re^3: Why am I getting Can't use string (<string value>) as an ARRAY ref wile "strict refs" in use by pryrt
in thread Why am I getting Can't use string (<string value>) as an ARRAY ref wile "strict refs" in use by 5NOMAD7

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