Dear Monks,

I'm struggeling with packages and eval ... here is my short example:

package items;
use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;
use Exporter;

my %items;
1; 

sub initItems
{
    $items{1}{Name} = "Rusty Sword";         # fine
    $items{2}{Value} = 2;                    # fine
    eval ("$items{3}{Value} = 2;");            # ERROR: Use of uniniti
+alized value in concatenation (.) or string at items.pm line 16.  (th
+is line)
    print( Data::Dumper->Dumpxs( [ \ %items ], [ qw{ *items } ] ));
}
[download]

When running it (calling items::initItems(); in my main program), I get the error mentioned above, and the output is:

%items = (
           '1' => {
                    'Name' => 'Rusty Sword'
                  },
           '3' => {},
           '2' => {
                    'Value' => 2
                  }
         );
[download]

What is wrong? Why does the eval somehow access my hash, but does not add the value? Is it something obvious and I'm just blind today?

Thanks for help! Rata