I don't see how your code could have possibly compiled in the first place, as "exporter" is not a valid module name. Perl packages and variables are case-sensitive. @ISA, @EXPORT, @EXPORT_OK and %EXPORT_TAGS must be upper-case in order for Exporter to work properly. I suspect this is perhaps not a direct copy-and-paste from your real code?

In any event, your second package is getting a copy of package::config's %ERRMSG because the implicit import does something akin to this: 

%package::caller::ERRMSG = %package::config::ERRMSG;

[download]

If you want a reference to the original hash (no copy) then you can set it up as a reference in your config module. 

package Config;
use base 'Exporter';
our $ERRMSG = { 123 => 'Some string error1',
                456 => 'Some string error2' };
our @EXPORT_OK = qw($ERRMSG);
our %EXPORT_TAGS = ( sms => [qw($ERRMSG)] );

package Foo;
use Config qw(:sms);

print $ERRMSG->{123};
print $ERRMSG->{456};

[download]

In reply to Re: refrencing a hash by friedo
in thread refrencing a hash by give_me_donations

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