At the time you access the value $media{bond}, it does not yet exist. To get around this, you can do something like:

$_ = "a:default:value" for @hash{'key1', 'key2', 'key3'};

# or

$hash{$_} = "a:default:value" for 'key1', 'key2', 'key3';

# or

@hash{'key1', 'key2', 'key3'} = ("a:default:value") x 3;
[download]

If you actually want one key of a hash to be an alias to another key, you'll have to do some tie() magic.

_____________________________________________________
Jeff[japhy]Pinyan: Perl, regex, and perl hacker.
s++=END;++y(;-P)}y js++=;shajsj<++y(p-q)}?print:??;