Note that in your option 3 the unique keys of the hash will be likely to clobber some data as the anonymonk specified that the first value is price in his problem. Hashes are great for many reasons but this example is easily and simply addressed by a simple numerical sort so unless there is reason to need to search the data by price, and a certainty of unique pricing, I'll go with one of your first two options.

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I'd like to be able to assign to an luser