Thanks for the fast reply. I'm sorry I normally check for hash reference. Can't understand why I didn't here i must have recursion brain ache. Example is the printTree function removed from the original post.

sub printTree
{
    my($a)=shift;
    my(@l);
    
    foreach $b (sort keys %{$a})
    {
        if(ref($a->{$b}) eq 'HASH')        
        {
            $l[$depth]=$b;
            print "@l\n";
            $depth++;
            printTree($a->{$b});
            $depth--;
        }
        else
        {
            $l[$depth]=$b;
            print "@l\n";
        }
    }
}
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