#!/usr/bin/perl use warnings; use strict; my %hash = (); $hash{a} = "123"; $hash{b} = "456"; $hash{c} = "789"; my $key = "c"; if ( defined($hash{$key}) && hash{$key} =~ m/\w+/ ) { $hash{$key} = "Numbers: " . $hash{$key}; } print $hash{$key}, "\n";