Data::Dumper does it like that because your code does it like that:

school=>[
          0=>{school_type=>"school", school_name=>undef, graduation_da
+te=>undef}, 
          1=>{school_type=>"school1", school_name=>undef, graduation_d
+ate=>undef},
                 ],
[download]

The other poster is suggesting you do it this way:

school=>[
         {school_type=>"school", school_name=>undef, graduation_date=>
+undef}, 
         {school_type=>"school1", school_name=>undef, graduation_date=
+>undef},
                 ],
[download]

However, if that's not the problem, perhaps you should tell us which line exactly is line 136. I could not tell this easily from your original post. perl's error messages tell you the line number for a reason.

line 136 is this one from the code block:


$member_info{'person'}[0]{'salutation'} = &skip_to_cell_text( 
+1 ); # error on this line
[download]


It is the first time I try to assign something to a spot in the structure.

The error message is exactly right. The first element of the array reference you've assigned to person is the value 0, which is not a hash reference. It's a plain scalar value. In Perl, you don't assign pairs of indices and values to arrays. Perl will automatically use the correct index numbers when you assign a list to an array.

Do what the first commenter suggested and your code will work better.