my @keys = keys %{$nodemetrics{'server1'}}; #### $ perl scratch.pl [...] 'server1' => { 'memory' => '1024', 'network' => '2200', 'cpu' => '30', 'disk' => '100' }, [...] $ perl scratch.pl [...] 'server1' => { 'disk' => '1024', 'memory' => '2200', 'cpu' => '30', 'network' => '100' } [...] #### my @system_attributes = qw(memory cpu disk network); [...] my $hashref = $nodemetrics{'server1'}; @$hashref{@system_attributes}=@data;