$ perl classes.pl What does Data::Dump see for my Employee? bless({ hourlywage => 50, hours => 40, name => "George" }, "Employee") How does it print? Employee info: name: George hours: 40 wage: 50 Let's create a couple more employees and print them: Employee info: name: Ellen hours: 30 wage: 35 Employee info: name: Phideaux hours: 10 wage: 5 Now we'll create an EmployeeList. What does Data::Dump see when it's empty? bless({ EmployeeList => [] }, "EmployeeList") How does an empty list print? Employee info: ARRAY(0x60028cbd8) After adding George, Ellen and Phideaux, our list looks like: bless({ EmployeeList => [ bless({ hourlywage => 50, hours => 40, name => "George" }, "Employee"), bless({ hourlywage => 35, hours => 30, name => "Ellen" }, "Employee"), bless({ hourlywage => 5, hours => 10, name => "Phideaux" }, "Employee"), ], }, "EmployeeList") How does it look using the built-in formatter? Employee info: ARRAY(0x600240278) Does get_EmployeeList work? [ bless({ hourlywage => 50, hours => 40, name => "George" }, "Employee"), bless({ hourlywage => 35, hours => 30, name => "Ellen" }, "Employee"), bless({ hourlywage => 5, hours => 10, name => "Phideaux" }, "Employee"), ]