Ref and deref of hash

[Jerry Preston]

I have a .pm file that calls sub a that calls sub b.  Sub B returns %data to
sub a in the form %a_data = sub a;  I am trying to return \%a_data to the
original program that call sub a.

$results = $data->a;

        sub a {
            %b_data = &b;
    
# data good!
        
            return \%b_data
        }1;

        sub b {
            
    
            return %b_data
        }1;

But no $results data.  What am I missing?

Thanks,

Jerry