"crashed and burned" is not much of a hint, or at least a Perl error message that is unknown to me. At least you provided some rudimentary source, but we are also interested in your attempts, and how they failed for you. Perl is often quite specific in its error messages and the diagnostics pragma can often even provide verbose information on how to fix the error condition.

You seem to be having trouble with references, so tye's References Quick Reference feels appropriate. If you have problems with that, consider the Perl Data Structures Cookbook or the Tutorials section on References, which also lists intro to references.