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in reply to Re: Hash of Hash of Hash of ...
in thread Hash of Hash of Hash of ...

There are also several pre-written implementations of this on CPAN. My Data::DRef module has functions to get and set values based on multiple-key lists like you're working with:
use Data::DRef qw( set_value_for_keys ); set_value_for_keys( \%big_hoh, $data, @key_list );