If you're building a tree structure you'll need to push on an array reference, otherwise you'll end up with a flat list e.g

my @sub_conns = &trace_sig_down_hier($vdb,$imod,$port,$full_path,$leve
+l);
## note the \ which creates the reference
push @connections, \@sub_conns;
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Also, Data::Dumper is terribly useful when it comes to looking at your datastructures.
HTH

_________
broquaint