Yes, thanks. I did try this initially, and it was the only way that I could get it to work. I slowly began to realize that I was probably using the wrong data structure when I had to do this...

Alternatively, is there a means, through clever indexing or such, that will also get me to the values I seek?

you can dereference the hash, then treat it as a list:

print Dumper( (%{ $transaction_record_fields_method1->[2] })[0] );
print Dumper( (%{ $transaction_record_fields_method1->[2] })[1] );
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but it probably makes more sense to just use an AoA.

What do you think about this structure?

my $transaction_record_fields = {
  'Batch_Agency'         =>  { COL => 0, POS => [  1 ..   3] },
  'Batch_Date'           =>  { COL => 1, POS => [  4 ..  11] },
  'Batch_Type'           =>  { COL => 2, POS => [ 12 ..  12] },
};
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Eventually, I'll be inserting some data into each column, so it will end up looking like this:

my $transaction_record_fields = {
  'Batch_Agency'         =>  { COL => 0, POS => [  1 ..   3], VALUE =>
+ "AAA" },
  'Batch_Date'           =>  { COL => 1, POS => [  4 ..  11], VALUE =>
+ "BBBBBBBB"},
  'Batch_Type'           =>  { COL => 2, POS => [ 12 ..  12], VALUE =>
+ "C"},
};
[download]

I like the idea of being able to insert by fieldname rather than by a numeric index, and this structure supports that.

OTOH, that fact that I have to hard-code the column index seems a little funky to me.