UPDATENo need to reply to this one have found my mistake in the original code and rectified. Sorry to anyone who has spent time looking at this. I probably owe you all a trapist beer from The Abbey Leffe.

Thanks for all your help with my last dereferencing problem and sorry that my code was not very clear, I was working that day with a Leffe (Belgium Beer) hang over, I wasn't to sharpe. I belived that I had hashes and references clear until today when I tried the following.
I am working on testing some perl scripts, translated by someone else, which replace SCL main frame code on a new server. The scripts replicate the convention of a variable having a name, localname and default value. I have also xml files with data about the scripts from which I can extract the data I need to run my testing programs. I have come up with the following code.

sub make_var_hash{
    my $xml = @_[0];
    my %myhash;
    my $name;
    my $localname;
    my $defaultval;
    
    #
    #read the xml file extract the data and add to the following hash

    #UPDATE sorry this line should be
    $myhash{$name} = [$localname,$defaultval];
    #NOT $myhash{$name} = ($localname,$defaultval);

    #end the loop
    return \%myhash;
}
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In my calling script

    $hash1 = make_var_hash('MOR2305.xml');
    foreach $key (keys($hash1)){
        print "$key = $$hash1{$key}[0] & $$hash1{$key}[1]\n";
    }
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Works fine with the following result

START = MOR_START & 60
FINISH = MOR_FINISH & 150
etc....
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Just what I needed!
However many of the scripts are strung together in suites and it would be useful to me to create a hash referencing the hashes created in in make_vars_hash.
So I tried this

sub get_suite_vars{
    my %suite;
    my ($job_vars, $job);
    my @jobs = ('MOR2305.xml', 'MOP4312.xml', 'IN543.xml');
    
    foreach $job ($job_vars){
       $job_vars = make_var_hash($job);
       $suite{$job} = $job_vars;
    }
    return \$suite;
}
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However back in my calling script I started to get some starnge results and to stop a long story getting longer I changed above to.

sub get_suite_vars{
    my %suite;
    my ($job_vars, $job);
    my @jobs = ('MOR2305.xml', 'MOP4312.xml', 'IN543.xml');
    
    foreach $job ($jobs){
       $job_vars = make_var_hash($job);
       #UPDATE for anyone interested the error was here
       #In my original code I had foreach $key($job_vars){      
       #SORRY
       foreach $key (keys($job_vars)){
           print "$key = $$job_vars{$key}[0] & $$job_vars{$key}[1]\n";
       }
       $suite{$job}=$job_vars;
    }
    return \$suite;
}
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Which produced

START = MOR_START &
ARRAY(0x1930fo30) = &
FINISH = MOR_FINISH & 
ARRAY(0x1931eaf0) = &
etc....
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Not what the doctor ordered. Whats happening? The code has been shortened a little but in principle is the same. Any help greatfully excepted.
Slight up date to inc. the file name in the first call to make_var_hash