http://qs1969.pair.com?node_id=482250


in reply to Counting Variations of Key in a Hash

So the end result for HIPPO1 and HIPPO2 should be the same, right? Assuming that, the following ends up with HIPPO as a key (no number -- just the 'root' name) (note that hashing on the 'root' animal name also eliminates the need for the nested looping over bigHash):
my %animals; while( my ($state, $zoos) = each %bighash ){ while( my ($zoo, $row) = each %$zoos ){ my $animal = $row->[1]; $animal =~ s/\d+$//; push @{$animals{$animal}->{$state}}, $zoo; } }
Note in your original code that @zoos probably shouldn't be globally scoped.