%cmdData = ( 'command_1' => { 'subfields' => [], 'description' => 'descriptive text', 'safety' => 'SAFE' }, 'command_2' => { 'subfields' => [ { '_size' => 32, 'state_conversions' => [], 'subfield_name' => 'sub_1', '_fsw_type' => 'UINT32', }, { '_size' => 32, 'state_conversions' => [], 'subfield_name' => 'sub_2', '_fsw_type' => 'UINT32', }, ], 'description' => 'descriptive text', 'safety' => 'SAFE', } ) #### #!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; use warnings; use Storable; my %info; my $cmdData = retrieve('file.pm') foreach my $cmd ( sort { $cmdData->{$a}{pkt_target} cmp $cmdData->{$b}{pkt_target} || $a cmp $b } keys %{$cmdData}) { print "$cmd "; if ($cmdData->{$cmd}{subfields} eq "") { print "undef\n"; } else { print "defined\n"; } };