It seems as though perl cannot use a stringified reference to something as a key for a hash. Below is a quick example of this. What am I doing wrong? And if I am not doing anything wrong... why does perl do what it does?
Example:
%hash = ([1,2] => "STUFF");
foreach $key (keys (%hash) )
{
    print "key |$key| => value |$hash{$key}| :".
          " dereferenced key |@{$key}|\n";
}

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This prints out:
key |ARRAY(0x80fbb0c)| => value |STUFF| : derefenced key ||

[download]
In fact "ref()" does not even see the key in that hash as a reference any longer.

So I have two questions:
1. Was this behavior planned?
2. If so, to what benefit?


--habit

In reply to using references as keys in a hash. by habit_forming

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