printf (a personal preference to debug statement like this) and different quoting might have avoided confusion in this case: 
# print "\$key is |$key| and \$value is |$value| or |$conf{'$key'}|.\n
+";

 printf '$key is |%s| and $value is |%s| or |%s|'."\n", $key, $value, 
+$conf{$key};

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In reply to Re: Disappearing hash values by davidrw
in thread Disappearing hash values by hesco

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