A short function to follow the path makes for a nice clean syntax.

#! perl -slw
use strict;

my $tree = {
    'misc' => {},
    'docs' => {
        'howtos' => {
            'email' => {
                'index.html' => {
                    'date' => '21-1-2004',
                    'size' => '691'
                }
            },
            'ftp' => {},
            'ssh' => {}
        }
    }
};

sub find{
    my( $href, $path ) = @_;
    $href = $href->{ $_ } for grep{ $_ } split '/', $path;
    $href;
}

my $input = '/docs/howtos/email/';

print find( $tree, $input )->{ 'index.html' }{ size };
[download]