TYVM!
I pretty familiar with hash internals from a user viewpoint but your details were most instructive. I read it twice but may need to read a few more times to let it sink in..
Curiously, I recall my FIRST programming assignment, way back in 1977, in APL, was to write a hash table manager, which stored and retrieved hashed elements. Thinking back to how that worked- I get what you're saying. Its not stored as an array (even though keys %h returns one).. I also recall writing a non-hashed storage manager and for reasonably-sized tables, the speeds were of course much better. I get that :)
Much appreciated you are the guru of Perl Hashes!