This worked just fine for me:

my %new = %{$hash{key1}{1}};
[download]

it produced:

$VAR1 = 'var';
$VAR2 = 1;
$VAR3 = 1;
$VAR4 = {
          'name1' => 'value3',
          'name2' => 'value2',
          'name3' => 'value3'
        };
[download]

the extra '1' key is there because I was lazy and just eval'ed your Dumper output without 'use strict' . . . .

short answer, take a number 2 :)

Jeff

R-R-R--R-R-R--R-R-R--R-R-R--R-R-R--
L-L--L-L--L-L--L-L--L-L--L-L--L-L--