Even though I'm convinced that proper copying would have solved the problem, I think that the idea of having subroutine return a brand-new lexical every time the defaults are needed is far preferable; I wish I had proposed it myself.

That said, this code has some unwarranted inefficiencies: 

sub default_values {
    my %default_values = (
            SUBJECT  => 'Subject (<= 44 characters) goes here',
            AUTHOR   => {
                NAME         => 'A. U. Thor',
                CPANID       => 'AUTHOR',
                WEBSITE      => 'http://a.galaxy.far.far.away/modules'
+,
                EMAIL        => 'a.u.thor@a.galaxy.far.far.away',
            },
    );
    return { %default_values };
}

[download]
Here the sub default_values generates a new hash, but then it returns a copy of it. That's doing twice the work. The assignment to the variable is also unnecessary work. I.e., just do this: 
sub default_values {
    return +{
              SUBJECT  => 'Subject (<= 44 characters) goes here',
              AUTHOR   => {
                NAME         => 'A. U. Thor',
                CPANID       => 'AUTHOR',
                WEBSITE      => 'http://a.galaxy.far.far.away/modules'
+,
                EMAIL        => 'a.u.thor@a.galaxy.far.far.away',
              },
            };
}

[download]

the lowliest monk

In reply to Re^5: Wrong Error Message When Testing for Failure of Constructor by tlm
in thread Wrong Error Message When Testing for Failure of Constructor by jkeenan1

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