in reply to Forcing dereference

What you're really copying is a reference to the secondary data structure, but what is being referenced is still the same thing. You need to make a deep copy. Heres one way to do it: 
use Storable qw(dclone);

my $fee->{'SOMETHING_02'} = dclone($foo->{'SOMETHING_01'});

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You'll probably want to read about the Storable module at cpan.

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Re^2: Forcing dereference
by radiantmatrix (Parson) on Oct 15, 2004 at 18:53 UTC

    Exactly right. Let me illustrate what is happening. Your data structure looks like (simplified): 

    $foo = { 'SOMETHING_01' => {'CLASS' => [ {'VALUE' => 'BUBBLE' } ] } }

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    Let's do a little analysis, assuming $foo retains its value: 
    $bar = $foo->{SOMETHING_01};   # $bar is hash reference
$caz = %{$foo->{SOMETHING_01}; # $caz is a hash 
print $caz{'CLASS'};           # 'ARRAY(...)' - an array reference
print $caz{'CLASS'}->[0];      # 'HASH(...)' - a hash reference

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    Note that when you copy a reference, you aren't copying the data -- you're making a new reference to the same data. By using the deep-copy method of the parent, you copy the data contained in the reference instead of the reference itself.

    radiantmatrix
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