[Webdev] Perl references

[Kathryn Cassidy]

Hello there,

I'm using the perl CGI module and I pull in the paramaters passed to
the script into a hash as follows:

my $params = $cgi->Vars;
my @keyvalues = $cgi->param;

The individual parameters are then accessed as $$params{'moo'}.

I'm constructing a sql statement and need to quote the above moo
variable, so I do

$dbh->quote($$params{'moo'})

which evaluates to null.  I thought that $$params{'moo'} would be a scalar 
like any other scalar even though I'm getting at it through a reference,
why would quote not work on it?

Any one want to enlighten me?

Kathryn.