>perl -wMstrict -MData::Dumper -le "my @key_names = qw(foo baz); my %hash; for my $key_name (@key_names) { $hash{$key_name} = [ reverse split '', $key_name ]; } print Data::Dumper->Dump([$hash{$_}], [qq{hash{$_}}]) for @key_names; " $hash{foo} = [ 'o', 'o', 'f' ]; $hash{baz} = [ 'z', 'a', 'b' ];