The problem seems to be the absence of types in Perl: if DiveVal encounters a number, it creates an array for you, not a hash:

:) The documentation disagrees -- you can specify \2 if you want to force hash keys

Note that all 'keys' that work for arrays also work for hashes. If you have a reference that is overloaded such that it can both act as an array reference and as a hash reference or, in the case of DiveVal() and DiveRef(), if you have an undefined $ref which can be autovivified into either type of reference, then numeric-looking key values cause an array dereference. In the above cases, if you want to do a hash dereference, then you need to pass in a reference to the key.

In reply to Re^2: Parsing a dataset into an arbitrary sized hash of hashes by Anonymous Monk
in thread Parsing a dataset into an arbitrary sized hash of hashes by DunLidjun

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