I'm trying to search a nested structure and return an array with references to all occurrences that match something like: 
->{foo}->{bar} 
or 
->{foo}->[0]->{bar}

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My recursive function (below) works fine for single instances like ->{bar} but somehow creates an endless loop with multiple parts (i.e ->{foo}->{bar}).
I think it has something to do with the eval corrupting $data but I dont understand why or how to fix it.

Any help would be appreciated.

The function: 
sub rec_data {
    my $path = shift; # ->{foo}->{bar}
    my $data = shift; # nested perl structure
    my @results;
    
    # nothing to search
    return unless ref $data;

    # stop the evals complaining
    no warnings 'all';
    
    if (ref $data eq 'HASH') {
        foreach my $k (keys %$data) {
            my $ref = qq|\$data->{$k}$path|;
            if (my $val = eval($ref)) {
                push @results, ref($val) ? $val : eval "\\$ref";
            }
            
            if (ref $data->{$k}) {
                push @results, rec_data($path, $data->{$k});
            }
        }
    }
    elsif (ref $data eq 'ARRAY') {
        foreach my $k (@$data) {
            my $ref = qq|\$k$path|;
            if (my $val = eval($ref)) {
                push @results, ref($val) ? $val : eval "\\$ref";
            }
            
            if (ref $k) {
                push @results, rec_data($path, $k);
            }
        }
    }

    return @results;
}

# test data
my $data = {
    test  => { 
        foo => { bar => 'bar', baz => 'baz' },
        bar => { baz => 'baz' }, 
    }
}

# search
my @results = rec_data('->{foo}->{bar}', $data);

[download]

In reply to searching nested structures by IOrdy

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