So, you're looking for code that doesn't look like:

# $hash_ref is passed in and defined outside
# $key_to_find is what we want to find.
# We will return the value of the first $key_to_find
sub traverse_funky_hash {
    my ($hash_ref, $key_to_find) = @_;

    HASH_LOOP:
    foreach (sort keys %$hash_ref) {
        if ($_ eq $key_to_find) {
            return ($hash_ref->{$_}, 1);
        }

        next HASH_LOOP unless ref($hash_ref->{$_} eq 'HASH');
        my ($val, $rc) = traverse_funky_hash($hash_ref->{$_}, $key_to_
+find);
        return ($val, $rc) if $rc;
    }

    return (undef, 0);
}
[download]

Obviously, that's for an arbitrarily-nested hash of hashes. (And, yes, I know I'm using ref. Sue me. *grins*)

Somehow, you want to make it so that you don't have to use the foreach over keys, right?