re-useing a hash

ministry has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

monks,

my issue today is with re-initializing a hash. in the following code (i posted it all, to help minimize the confusion) i use a hash as a counter for every instance i run into a specific pattern match. in this code i look through a firewall config file, and the same firewalls logfile for rule numbers. the config file will yield a result of all rules listed on the firewall, while the logfile search will result in a total count of each rule that it has found.

  ($rule)="$1";
  $hash{$rule}=($hash{$rule}+1);
[download]

with this being the only way i know how to increment a count of undefined items, i have not found a way to properly clear this hash before assigning it to the task of searching through my next firewalls config/log file. in searching the web, the only item i have found is the use of %hash=() however this will not eleminate each key/value pair from my hash.

#!/usr/bin/perl

$reportdir="/report/csv";
@basedirs=qw</log /log2>;
foreach $starting_point (@basedirs){
  &recursion("$starting_point");
}
sub recursion {
  my $dir=shift;
  opendir(DIR, $dir) or return;
  my @contents=map "$dir/$_",sort grep !/^\.\.?$/,readdir DIR;
  closedir DIR;
  foreach (@contents) {
    next unless !-l && -e;
    &recursion($_);
    next if -d | /gz/ | ! /20050412/;
    if (/12\/(\w+(-\w+)??)(-\d)??-20050412/){push(@list,$1);}
  }
}
sub seek{
  my $directory=shift;
  opendir(LIFT, $directory) or return;
  my @closed=map "$directory/$_",sort grep !/^\.\.?$/,readdir LIFT;
  closedir LIFT;
  foreach (@closed){
    next unless !-l && -e;
    &seek($_);
    next if -d | ! /$indiv/;
    next if ! /20050412/;
    push(@cleaned,$_);
  }
}
sub gather{
  `tar xvf /var/config/$uniqu-config.20050412 gateway.cf`;
  $config_fw="gateway.cf";
  open (GATEWAY,"$config_fw") || die "cant open gateway:$!";
  while (<GATEWAY>){
    if (/\#(\d+)/) {
      $rule="$1";
      $hash{$rule}="0";
    }
  }
  close GATEWAY;
  unlink ($config_fw);
}
%seen=(); @uniqu=grep { ! $seen{$_} ++ } @list;
foreach $uniqu (@uniqu){
  %hash=();
  if ($uniqu=~/tias/){$tune="/log";$indiv="$uniqu-";}
  else {$tune="/log2";$indiv="$uniqu-";}
  open(REPORT,">$reportdir/$uniqu-20050412");
  &seek($tune);
  &gather;
  for $i (@cleaned){
    open (FH,"$i");
    while (<FH>){
      if (/rule\=(\d+)/){
        ($rule)="$1";
        $hash{$rule}=($hash{$rule}+1);
      }
    }
  }
  foreach $rule (sort{$a<=>$b} keys(%hash)){
    print REPORT "$uniqu,12/04/2005,$rule,$hash{$rule}\n";
  }
  close REPORT;
  close FH;
}
[download]

any help or advice (aside from suggesting i re-write the entire code) would be greatly appreciated.
regards, ev

Good judgement comes with experience. Unfortunately, the experience usually comes from bad judgement.

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