FireBird34: Your subsequent post indicates your problem is resolved, but just for the record:

>perl -wMstrict -le
"my $key = \"that's it!\";
 my $value = \"foo\";
 my %something;
 $something{$key} = $value;
 print $something{$key};
 use Data::Dumper;
 print Dumper \%something;
"
foo
$VAR1 = {
          'that\'s it!' => 'foo'
        };
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