Something like  HASH(0x68e26a8) is the stringization of a reference to a 'pure', i.e. unblessed, hash. You are printing a reference to a hash, whereas before, presumably, you were printing the tasty goodness of its content.

A blessed object reference would stringize differently. (See bless.)

>perl -wMstrict -le
"my %hash = ('a' => 1,  'b' => 2,  {} => 4);
 print qq{key '$_' -> value '$hash{$_}'} for keys %hash;
 my $hashref = \%hash;
 print qq{hashref is '$hashref'};
 my $objectref = bless $hashref;
 print qq{objectref is '$objectref'};
"
key 'a' -> value '1'
key 'b' -> value '2'
key 'HASH(0x56c19c)' -> value '4'
hashref is 'HASH(0x431d5c)'
objectref is 'main=HASH(0x431d5c)'
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