You wouldn't have had this problem had you not disabled strictures by omitting use strict;. Use use strict;!!!
You did $$hash_ref{$key} in one place and $hash_ref{$key} in the other. The latter accesses the (non-existant) hash %hash_ref, not the hash referenced by $hash_ref.
By the way, $hash_ref->{$key} is a clearer way or writing $$hash_ref{$key}.
And since you already have $hash_ref->{$key} in $val, @{ $hash_ref->{$key} } can be written as @{$val} and @$val.
Cleaned up code:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
my $hash_ref = set_up();
foreach my $key (keys %{$hash_ref}) {
my $val = $hash_ref->{$key};
if (ref($val)) {
print "total '$key' = ", scalar @{$val}, "\n";
foreach my $act (@{$val}) {
print "\t$act\n";
}
} else {
print "$key - $val\n";
}
}
sub set_up {
return {
one => "cat",
two => "dog",
actions => [ "feed", "walk", "pet", "groom" ],
};
}
In case you don't know, Data::Dumper is your friend when you need to debug a data structure such as the one you are building.
Update: Added code.
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