When you see something like HASH(0x70a49a8), Perl is telling you that you're dealing with a reference to a hash rather than the hash itself.

Possible sources of more information include a good basic Perl text (for example, Learning Perl, O'Reilly) and, here in the Monastery, intro to references and RFC (possible new tutorial) Guide to references; The Basics.

And, as I noted in a message, please read the formatting instructions which appear below the text input box, each time you go to create a node. <c>...</c> tags would make your code more readable.