Does Perl just look at the first n characters in a hash?

No.

Does it see it starts with numbers and then only takes the numbers up until a non-numeric value?

No.

Does anyone have an idea to what is happening?

Yes. You treat the string "text" as a hash reference. Using use strict; use warnings; would have caught this.

In reply to Re^2: Strange Hash Problem by ikegami
in thread Strange Hash Problem by rpike

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