http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=977605


in reply to Initialize an hash with string

my %inp = ( KEY1 => 'VALUE1', KEY2 => { 'VALUE 21', 'VALUE 22', 'VALUE 23' } )

Note that hashes hold key-value pairs, i.e. the above structure would be more like

my %inp = ( KEY1 => 'VALUE1', KEY2 => { 'VALUE 21' => 'VALUE 22', 'VALUE 23' => undef } )

Not sure if that's what you want.  Maybe you rather want an array(ref) (i.e. KEY2 =>  [ ... ]) here?