in reply to In search of elegant code - looking deeply into a hash

How about this: 
my @possible_last_names = 
  map {$_->{lastname}} grep {$_->{firstname} eq "Alice"} values %uid;
# Returns ("Foo")

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        "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that." - George Carlin

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom