It is possible to return a hash...

#!perl -w
use strict;
use Data::Dumper;

sub test {
    my %hash = ( a => 1,
                 b => 2,
                 c => 3, );
    return %hash;
}

my %got_this = &test;

print Dumper( \%got_this );
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The hash returned is simply a list that happens to have an even number of values (and unique values in the key positions 0,2,4,6,8etc.).

"Argument is futile - you will be ignorralated!"