#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; use Data::Dumper; my %hash; $hash{'A'.'B'} = 1; # note a mistakenly written comma between 'C' and 'D' $hash{'C','D'} = 2; $hash{'E','F'} = 3; print Dumper(\%hash); print exists $hash{'CD'} ? "YES\n" : "NO\n";