>perl -wMstrict -le "my %hash = qw(one uno two dos); my @y = 5 .. 8; ;; print 'scalar @y: ', scalar @y; print 'does not exist' if not exists $hash{ @y }; ;; $hash{ '4' } = 'four'; print 'does exist: ', qq{'$hash{ @y }'} if exists $hash{ @y }; " scalar @y: 4 does not exist does exist: 'four'