It's a workable solution as indicated by others. So, if it didn't work for you you might ask where and why it failed, or tell us where if you know and ask why.

I noticed something curious about your example code, and since you wrote it I'm wondering why you didn't find it curious. You're iterating over one level if it's an array but a different level if it's a hash. Is that really how your data structure looks?

I'd suggest trying Data::Dumper to see what your data looks like at different points of your program. The processing code needs to process the proper part of the data each time, or you'll get odd results you didn't expect.