I figured that alright and tried the code with all the spaces but it didn't make any difference. I'm pulling the data from a database that's why the white space is there. That's also how it's being assigned the undef value although I don't know why. Here's the structure of the code that's doing that: 
my %ret;
if ( defined( $rv ) and @$rv )
        {
                map { %{$ret{$$_{name}}->{$$_{project}}={$$_{result}}}
+} @$rv;
        }
return %ret;

[download]

Update: I finally managed to get this working the way I wanted. Just thought I'd post how I did it in case it's useful to someone else in the future and wanted to say thanks to everyone that took the time to reply to me. Here's the approach I took: 
my ($value1, $value2);
foreach (sort keys %hash)
{
  foreach (sort keys %{$hash{$random_name}})
  {
     foreach $k1 (sort keys %{$hash{$random_name}{$fixed_name1}})
     {
        $value1 = $k1;
     }
     foreach $k2 (sort keys %{$hash{$random_name}{$fixed_name2}})
     {
        $value2 = $k2;
     }
etc.
   }
}
print "$value1\n";

[download]
Worked a charm. My full version has some error checking in case one of the values didn't exist. Did this with some if defined before the foreach and an else { after.

In reply to Re^4: How to get specific hash elements? by talking_walnut
in thread How to get specific hash elements? by talking_walnut

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