print "$user is in the hash. \n";
        @user_array = split(/ /, $p2i{$user});

        foreach (@user_array) {
        print "$_\n";
        }

##</code><code>##

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my $file = "p2iextact.txt";
my %p2i;
my @user_array;
my $sp;
my $ipr;
my $key;
my $user;

# creates hash of arrays

open(FILE, "p2iextact.txt") || die "can't open file";
while(<FILE>) {
  chomp;
        ($sp, $ipr) = split;
        if (exists $p2i{$sp}) {
        push @{$p2i{sp}}, $ipr;
        }
        else {
        $p2i{$sp}= [$ipr];
        }

}

close FILE;

# test to see if hash created correctly

foreach $key (sort keys %p2i) {
  print "$key\t$p2i{$key}\n";
}

print "Please enter an ID: ";
chomp( $user = <STDIN>);

# try to used uppercaes function to avoid errors
$user = uc($user);

#see if id is in the hash and print @vals
if (exists $p2i{$user}) {
        print "$user is in the hash. \n";if (exists $p2i{$user}) {
        print "$user is in the hash. \n";
        @user_array = split(/ /, $p2i{$user});

        foreach (@user_array) {
        print "$_\n";
        }
        # print "$user: @{ $p2i{$user} }\n";  
        # only retieves one value even when more than one   #val even if there are multiple
        }
        else {
        print "$user is not in the hash.\n";
        }

exit;