The following code creates a hash and its reference. It prints from both showing that it is in fact referencing the hash. You should check perldata to get started

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my %hidden = (var_name1 => 'var_value1',
              var_name2 => 'var_value2');

my $hidden_ref = \%hidden;

print $$hidden_ref{var_name1};
print $hidden{var_name1};
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