Creating JSON in perl - json

Question

Using this code, I am only getting an array of values name and extension listed one after the other, how do I get a separate {name:"tom", extension:"012345"} for each hash I am creating? i.e I would like [{name:"tom", extension:"012345"}, {name:"tim", extension:"66666"}]
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use lib $ENV{HOME} . '/perl/lib/perl5';
use lib '/home/accounts/lib';
use Data::Dump qw(dump);
use Lib::Phonebook;
use JSON;
my $ldap = Lib::Phonebook->new();
my (#names, #numbers, $count, $name_number_count, #result);
#names = $ldap->list_telephone_account_names();
#numbers = $ldap->list_telephone_account_numbers();
$name_number_count = #names;
$count = 0;
for $count (0 .. $name_number_count - 1) {
my %hash = ( "name" => $names[$count], "extension" => $numbers[$count] );
push( #result, %hash );
}
my $json = encode_json \#result;
print dump $json;

Answer 1

Instead of
push( #result, %hash );
do:
push( #result, \%hash );
The original statement copies the entire hash to a list (as you discovered that becomes key, value, key, value, ...), whereas adding the backslash pushes a reference to the hash (without copying anything else) and serializing all that to JSON creates a nested structure.