You are missing a closing } in your example, that would lead me to beleive that this isn't the code actualy producing that result....or just a cut and paste error, either way it would be good to add your } and enlose all your code and results in <code></code> tags.

I am wondering if you are also misusing HTML::Form the documentation says to use $form->inputs() to get at the fields and your are accessing its hash directly. I would think that the behavour of objects when you don't follow their interface is undefined as you are seeing. I am willing to bet however that the output you are getting is the result of some sort of string overloading in the first case that you arn't getting in the second.