What you need to do is push a reference to the hash into the array. see perlman:perlref for details on references, but basically a reference is something that points to something rather than being the thing. If you know C, then it's a pointer that does what you always thought pointers should : ) If not, than it is a scalar which holds a value that points to where perl can find something else like a hash.

references can be simple like:

use strict;    # or DIE : )
use warnings;  # or SUFFER : )

my %hash = { one => 'this', two => 'that' };

my $reference = \%hash #the \ tells perl to store a reference

# then you can use the reference like you would the hash by DEreferenc
+ing it

print "$reference->{one}";
# prints this
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so in your case you would actually do sometihng like:

push @kung, \%item;
print "Kungfoo is ->", $kung[0]{foo}, "<-\n";
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Originally posted as a Categorized Answer.