my %hash;
$hash{ewh1234} = ['engineer', 23.4, 1.2, 'local'];
# value for key ewh1234 is a reference to an anonymous array
....
print "@{$hash{ewh1234}}\n";   # will print the array
print "$hash{ewh12134}[1]\n";  # will print 23.4
....
[download]

What I tried doing (and failed) was the following: $hash{$empid} = $title, $adjst, $adjst2, $linex; "$linex" is actually an array with a number of variables and the other "substitution" variables are created earlier in the program. In executing this, Perl gave me the word "ARRAY" followed by an 0x hex string and then a 1 when I tried printing the first value. Can I not use the $ variables within the hash structure?

Spooky,

you can always explicitly define the type so instead of $linex (a pointer to an array) you can use "@{$linex}", my SCALAR is actually a list, honest.

cheers

John

use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;

my %account = (
    ewh1234 => {
        job  => 'engineer',
        foo  => 23.4,
        bar  => 1.2,
        area => 'local'
    }
);

print $account{ewh1234}{foo}, "\n";
print Dumper($account{ewh1234});

__END__
23.4
$VAR1 = {
          'bar' => '1.2',
          'area' => 'local',
          'foo' => '23.4',
          'job' => 'engineer'
        };
[download]

OP would probably find perldsc, perlref and Data::Dumper useful for playing around and getting to grips with things?

Just a something something...