%pets = ( 'pony' => 2, 'cat' => 2, 'dog' => 2 ); #### #!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; my @pets = ("dog", 1, "cat", 2, "pony", 2, "dog", 2); my %pets; while (@pets) { my $key = shift @pets; my $val = shift @pets; $pets{$key} += $val; } foreach (sort keys %pets) { print "$_: $pets{$_}\n"; }