Re^2: I just want to understand why ...

[Anonymous Monk]

And then there's the third way which requires some extra typing, but is fine for two-level or three-level hashes:

my $r = $hashref; # better to use a short variable name here
if($r->{a} and $r->{a}->{b} and exists $r->{a}->{b}->{c}) 
{
# Do something
}