As Russ pointed out, you are not making an array in the second case. However, you are also not comparing the hashes correctly in the first case since the %hashCompany might have additional stuff that you will not see. So:

my %hash1 = {a => 1, b => 2};
my %hash2 = {a => 1, b => 2, c => 3};
[download]

would pass your check above. You can quickly check that with keys() to see how big the hashes are and shortcircuit if they are different sizes.

Not that this helps answer your real question. I would try but I am not yet sure what you want your data structure to look like.

-ben