Bring this transform function into sync with the policy established
by commit 3a382983.

Also, fix it to make sure that what it drills down to is indeed a
hash, and not some other kind of Perl SV.  Previously, the test
cases added here provoked crashes.

Because of the crash hazard, back-patch to 9.5 where this module
was introduced.

Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/28336.1528393969@sss.pgh.pa.us