Thank you! This is such an elegant solution. You make hashes awesome. I did not realize you could use regex bare. I always believe you needed a {$variable =~} syntax.
Comment on Re^2: How to compare elements within an array
As I'm sure you've surmised, the regex implicitly operates on Perl's default scalar $_. As you examine more Perl code, you'll note regexes often being used in this context.