'I still find some things hard to figure out...'. Welcome to the club. There is always going to be something difficult. However, the best way I have found to reduce the frustration factor is to look for a tutorial or the right book. For dealing with hashes and getting a 'big picture' of how they work I recommend Effective Perl Programming. It has pretty pictures that show you how data types in Perl are represented as well as example code of operations you will find very useful.
Celebrate Intellectual Diversity
