how to merge 2 deep hashes in perl

Question

I write a sub in Perl to merge 2 hashes of the same structure; so that merge($a,$b)

$a = {
 k1 => { sk1 => 'v1' },
 k2 => { sk3 => 'v3', sk4 => 'v4' }
};
$b = {
 k1 => { sk2 => 'v2'},
 k3 => { sk5 => 'v5'} 
};

would result in

$c = {
 k1 => { sk1 => 'v1', sk2 => 'v2' },
 k2 => { sk3 => 'v3', sk4 => 'v4' }
 k3 => { sk5 => 'v5'} 
};

Below is my code for merge, and it does not work. How can I correct it? Thank you.

sub merge {
 my ($old,$new) = @_;
 foreach my $k (keys($old)) {
  if (exists $new->{$k}) {
   if (ref($old->{$k}) eq 'HASH') {
    merge($old->{$k},$new->{$k});
   } else {
    $new->{$k} = $old->{$k};
   } 
  } else { 
   $new->{$k} = $old->{$k};
  }
 }
 return $new;
}

Answer 1

Unless you're doing this just to learn how it's done, I'd use a premade solution like Hash::Merge or Hash::Merge::Simple.