You can only assign references to shared arrays and hashes into shared hashes. You can either declare them shared and assign a reference:

my %hash : shared;
my @array : shared;
my %hash2 : shared;

$hash{ array } = \@array;
$hash{ hash  } = \%hash;
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Which is simple but often inconvenient. Or you can use threads::shared::share to them before assignment.

There are two caveats with the second approach.

1. If you share a pre-existing hash or array that already contains data, that data is discarded.
2. The share() sub uses a prototype which rejects attempts to share anonymous structures.

You can make life a little easier by bypassing the prototypes using $sharedHash{ key } = &share( {} ) and $sharedHash{ key } = &share( [] ), but don't be tempted to do $sharedHash{ key } = &share( [ 'some', 'stuff', 'here' ] );because the contents will be discarded.

An example

#! perl -slw
use strict;
use threads;
use threads::shared;
use Data::Rmap;

sub thread {
    my( $hashref ) = @_;
    rmap{
        print "$_";
    } $hashref;
}

my %hash : shared;

$hash{ leaf } = 'fred';
$hash{ L1 } = &share( {} );
$hash{ L1 }{ leaf } = 'wilma';
$hash{ L1 }{ L2 } = &share( {} );
$hash{ L1 }{ L2 }{ leaf } = 'bam bam';
$hash{ L1 }{ L2 }{ L3 } = &share( {} );
$hash{ L1 }{ L2 }{ L3 }{ leaf } = 'flintstone';

threads->create( \&thread, \%hash )->join;

__END__
P:\test>junk2
fred
wilma
bam bam
flintstone
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