Clint, thanks for answering. I am actually going to do exactly what you said, however, I am trying to find where it points to a value so I can reinit it into a hash. I ended up doing it in strings, and its working fine now, I take it step by step and if at any point it points to a value it simply gets replaced by a hash as needed. I am little stuck on the following code perhaps you could help me out.

sub addTo()
{
  my $location = $_[0];
  my $data = $_[1];
  my @keys = split(/\//, $location);
  my $key;
 
  my $current = $database;
  while($key = shift(@keys))
  {
    $current->{$key} = {} unless (exists $current->{$key} && ref($curr
+ent->{$key}) eq "HASH");
    $current = $current->{$key};
  }
  
  #I AM STUCK HERE -----
  $current = $data;
}
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Since $current is a pointer, I understand that by setting it to $data it doesn't change the value of what its referencing but changes $current to equal the scalar value $data.

I tried the following snippet

my $pointer = \$database->{"2002"}->{"Gustav"}->{"General"}->{"Overvie
+w"};
${$pointer} = "nasdfaull";
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This worked well, and actually changed the value it was referencing. However, when I tried to do the same referencing technique below with $current = $database, I would get stuck on the unless line, telling me that I didn't have a hash reference. The addTo method definitely works if I keep it as it now but switch the $current = $data code with

$current->{$key} = $data;
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I would really like to make it work without having to switch that though.

-Constantin