Dereference a HASH reference

I'm at my wits end.  I've pulled every trick I know (which ain't many) 
and I still can't get this working.  Please, for the love of pete (and 
my sanity) help with this.

I'm building a web page that has a series of checkboxes each with a day 
of the week.  Pretty straightforward, right?  Well, from that page I'm 
passing the params to a CGI script that does this:

> my %attrs = (
> 	shift_name => $q->param('shift_name'),
> 	shift_beg => $q->param('shift_beg'),
> 	shift_end => $q->param('shift_end'),
> 	shift_days => $q->param('dow'),
> 	factory_id => $q->param('factory'),
> );

 From there I pass a reference to the hash to a subroutine 
($dao->insert_shift(\%attrs);

Here's where it blows up.  This is the sub:

sub insert_shift {
       my $self = shift;
       my($attrs) = @_;

       my $m = $self->schema->resultset('Shifts')->new($attrs);
       $m->insert;
}

 From here it gets inserted into a DB table (called shifts, obviously).

Here's my problem, with the original %attrs I was getting the 'dow' 
params but the insert into the DB bombs because the param('dow') isn't a 
scalar(?).  I did have someone tell me that I needed the line:

shift_days => $q->param('dow'),

to be:

shift_days => [ $q->param('dow') ],

At that point I get all the data inserted into the database EXCEPT the 
DOW (day of week) parameter, which I only get this: ARRAY(0x9517d38)

This is where I'm stuck.  I know I need to dereference that hash, but 
for the life of me I can't figure it out.

Early on, when I realized that the 'dow' was being passed as an array I 
tried to convert that array into a string, but it never did work. At 
least i couldn't make it work.

Does anyone have some idea on what I should do next?  At this point, 
I'll try anything short of shooting my dog.

Help.


-- 

Mark Haney
Software Developer/Consultant
AB Emblem
[email protected]
Linux marius.homelinux 3.3.8-1.fc16.x86_64 GNU/Linux