I'm working on a script to parse /etc/passwd across multiple systems. Because we don't allow root logins over ssh, using a module such as Unix::PasswdFile is not an option, so I'm attempting to do it manually. Here's some sample code:

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w

use strict;

my $password;

open F, '/etc/passwd';
while (<F>) {
    my ($nam, $pwd, $uid, $gid, $dsc, $hom, $shl) = split /:/, $_;
    my @attrs = \($nam, $pwd, $uid, $gid, $dsc, $hom, $shl);

    foreach my $attr (@attrs) {
        $password->{"$nam"}->{"$attr"} = $$attr;
    }
}
close F;

use Data::Dumper;
print Dumper $password;
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I'd like my data structure to be in the form of $password->{'root'}->{'dsc'} = 'Super-user'. The problem is, my Dumper output has SCALAR listed instead of the attribute ('dsc'). Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

-s.