Your variable $hRef will contain the value '1'.

You are evaluating an array (@_) in scalar context, which returns the number of elements in the array (in this case, 1).

To get round this, either extract a useful scalar from @_ using one of these approaches:

my $hRef = shift;
my $hRef = $_[0];
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Or change the assigment to a list assignment:

my ($hRef) = @_;
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