in reply to Can't use string ("STRING") as a HASH ref - Help!

It is hard to say ... what are you passing to foo? What line is the error occuring? You might need to provide a little more info. But my WAG is that you are calling foo like so ... 
foo($bar);

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... when you should be calling it like this ... 
foo(\$bar);

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Plankton: 1% Evil, 99% Hot Gas.

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom