use strict; my %allusers = ( 'users' => { 'user' => 'Test Account', '*Crudles' => 'Hello World', 'Crud' => 'Another Test', '*test' => 'Crud User' } ); foreach my $key (keys %allusers ) { delete $allusers {'users'}{$key} if '*' eq substr $key, 0, 1; }