How is that a valid reason? Please don't use symbolic references without a good reason. Processing user input is an ever better reason NOT to use symbolic references. What if you end up trashing a perlvar? Create a HoH and don't live dangerously, here's a snippet that processes input:

my %HoH;
while (<DATA>) {
 my ($name, $key, $value) = split;
 $HoH{$name}{$key} = $value;
}
__DATA__
name key value
a b c
1 2 3
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