#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; use Data::Dumper; my $h = { 'a' => 1, 'b' => 2, 'c' => 3, }; warn Dumper [ $$h{a}, $$h{x}, $$h{b}, $$h{c} ]; warn Dumper [ keys %$h ]; warn Dumper [ grep {$$h{$_}} qw/a b c x/ ]; # <-- no side effect warn Dumper [ keys %$h ];