Just to make something clear, by trying to assess context in your tied hash, you are breaking a Perl idiom: that hash values are only ever scalars. That scalar may be a reference to something else, like an array or hash, but the hash value itself is only ever a scalar.

Consider this:

   %fs = (
     dir1 => [ 'file1','file2','file3' ],
     dir2 => [ 'file4','file5','file6' ],
   ); 

   $contents = $fs{dir1};
   $file     = $fd{dir1}[0];
[download]

I would expect $contents to contain an array-ref, and $file to contain a scalar string. If I wanted an array returned instead, I would write:

   @contents = @{$fs{dir1}};
[download]

which would still work with your code, because the @ converts the reference to a list, OUTSIDE the tied class. To do otherwise would, in my opinion, just add confusion: this works just like a hash, except when it doesn't...

Clint