Greetings,
friedo++ on how to solve this particular problem so I will point you at some helpful docs.
perlref (about anonymous and referenced structures) & Dumpvalue or Data::Dumper (both of which will help make sure you are creating what you think you are creating).
quick usage example:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use Dumpvalue;

print "dumping data structure\n";
dump_ref(\$reference_to_your_nested_data_structure);
exit;
#the sub.
sub dump_ref
{
  my $d = new Dumpvalue;
  my $ref = shift;
  $d->dumpValues($ref);
}
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