perl -we "my %hash = @ARGV" Andy 1995 Sarah 1990 Sam 1992 UNEXPECTED Odd number of elements in hash assignment at -e line 1. #### @ARGV = qw( Andy 1995 Sarah 1990 Sam 1992 UNEXPECTED ); my %hash; while (my $key = shift @ARGV and my $val = shift @ARGV){ $hash{$key}=$val } # hash is: ("Sam", 1992, "Andy", 1995, "Sarah", 1990) #### use strict; use warnings; use List::Util qw(pairs); @ARGV= qw(Andy 1995 Sarah 1990 Sam 1992 UN); my %hash; for my $pairs (pairs @ARGV){ $hash{ $$pairs[0] } = $$pairs[1]; } Odd number of elements in pairs at -e line 1. # hash is: ("Sarah", 1990, "Andy", 1995, "UN", undef, "Sam", 1992)