Couple things... First, you don't want to use eq when checking the result of your ref() call, because it'll never match. The ref($item) will return a value like HASH(0x8580988), so you only want to see if it contains the string "HASH". Like so... 
if (ref($item) =~ /HASH/) {}

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Second, if you're trying to print out the actual values in the hash or array referenced in your top-level array, you're going to need to dereference them. 
print "Array in Array: ", @{$item}, "\n";
...
print "Hash in Array: ", %{$item}, "\n";

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...and so you end up with something like... 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
$, = " ";

my %Volume_Info = ( alpha => [ 0, 512, 1048576, 1,
                               { one => 'first_hash' },
                               [ 'two', 'first_array' ],
                               { three => 'second_hash' },
                               -1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 'zfod', 0 ],
                    beta  => [ 1, 2, 3,
                               { four => 'third_hash' },
                               2, 1 ] );

for my $vol_key ( sort keys %Volume_Info ) {
        print "\nVolume: $vol_key\n";
        foreach my $item ( @{ $Volume_Info{$vol_key}} ) {
            if (ref($item) =~ /ARRAY/) {
                print "Array in Array item: ", @{$item}, "\n";
            } elsif (ref($item) =~ /HASH/) {
                print "Hash in Array: ", %{$item}, "\n";
            } else {
                print "Array Item: $item \n";
            }
        }
    }

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...which produces... 
Volume: alpha
Array Item: 0 
Array Item: 512 
Array Item: 1048576 
Array Item: 1 
Hash in Array:  one first_hash 
Array in Array item:  two first_array 
Hash in Array:  three second_hash 
Array Item: -1 
Array Item: 0 
Array Item: 0 
Array Item: 0 
Array Item: 0 
Array Item: 0 
Array Item: zfod 
Array Item: 0 

Volume: beta
Array Item: 1 
Array Item: 2 
Array Item: 3 
Hash in Array:  four third_hash 
Array Item: 2 
Array Item: 1

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Hope this helps.

-Bird

Update: Made my code a little more consistent across examples.

Update 2: Silly me not reading up on ref before responding. :-} See comments by thelenm and Chmrr below.

In reply to Re: A hash of an array containing hashes & arrays by Bird
in thread A hash of an array containing hashes & arrays by ebodine

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