Best way to Send Hash to a Socket

[JupiterHost.Net]

Hello list,
To day I am trying to figure out the best way to send a hash to a socket 
and have the receiver be able to use it as a hash.

The best way I've done so far is to Data::Dumper the hash into a string 
and send the string, then parse the string back into a hash on the other 
end.

So client side is something like this:
# where hashtostring() puts Data::Dumper's output into a string
 my $hash_in_string = hashtostring(\%hash);
 print $sock $hash_in_string;
 ...
and the server has something like this:
# where stringtohash() take the string
# (from hashtostring() above) and parses into a hash
 while ($new_sock = $sock->accept()) {
    while (defined($buf = <$new_sock>)) {
        foreach ($buf) {
                my %hash_from_client_string = stringtohash($_);
                ...
That works but I am wondering if there is a better way or an already 
existent way to do that. -IE hashtostring() and stringtohash()-

I can't use refs of course because the server will receive the text 
HASH.... from the client and that wouldn't be too useful in the server.

TIA
Lee.M - JupiterHost.Net
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