I believe what you want is:

my %hash = @{ $diary_data[0] };
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The "Reference found where even-sized list expected" stems from you trying to assign a scalar reference to a hash, but a hash expects a list with an even number of elements. You can reproduce that error from the command line:

perl -w -e "$a[0]=[1,2];%hash=$a[0]"
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The following eliminates the error:

perl -w -e "$a[0]=[1];%hash=@{$a[0]}"
[download]

Cheers,
Ovid

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Update: Fixed error in original reply. I had %{ $diary_data[0] } instead of @{ $diary_data[0] }.

Update 2: Just saw AgentM's update. He was actually right. This code:

my %hash = %{ $diary_data[0] };
[download]

Will force a "Can't coerce array into hash" error.