I find it pretty difficult to make sense of your question - for once, please edit your post and put code tags around <code>the code</code> or c tags around <c>code</c> you use inside sentences.

In your post there are obviously no sigils $ or @ or % around what looks like your data or part of some code for the array you mention. So I cannot really tell whether you mean to show some data or pseudo code or if something went wrong when you thought you entered perl code. And I don't understand. Better put the real code you have used until you got your unwanted results into your question.

Cheers, Sören

nmm_7280:

If you used a hash, I'd expect it to work in any sequence. So have you tried running it with the different input orders? You didn't post your code, so there's really no way of telling if your code would work with a different input sequence or not.

If you did it the way I'd've expected, it would work if you entered a[0:0], a[4:5], a[1:3] or a[4:5], a[0:3] as well.

Why not post your code here so we can take a look at it?

...roboticus

When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like your thumb.

1. The data you have posted does not clearly map to data in memory. I'm guessing that your array initialization code would actually look like:

   my @array = (
       'a[1:0]',
       'a[3:2]',
       'a[5:4]',
   );
   [download]

   but I could be wrong. This is why Anonymous Monk asked you to post your array initialization statement. Because of how you've presented it, my first thought was you has some weird array slice question.

2. How one maps your dataset to your output is unclear. Again, I could guess at an answer (biggest first number, smallest second number), but that's just a guess. Does every element necessarily look like a[*:*]? You said you "tried with the hash", but it is unclear to me how a hash would solve this issue. Can you post your preliminary code that shows some results?

If I implemented this (based on some wild guesses), I'd use a regular expression in a for loop and cache the max and min in script-level variables. Or possibly use max and min from List::Util in conjunction with maps (e.g. my ($max) = max map /(\d)/, @list;). But this is largely dictated by your spec, which is poorly defined.

Are you sure the OP is Perl code? Looks like it might be D.
Code (D 2.065.0 for Win32):

import std.stdio;

void main () {

    int[int] a = [ 1:0, 3:2, 5:4, ];

    foreach (k, v;  a) {
        writefln("%d => %d", k, v);
        }

    }
[download]

C:\@Work\DMD2\learn\PM\nmm_7280>pm1115263_1
1 => 0
3 => 2
5 => 4
[download]