Don't make another structure. Just keep both the array and the hash handy. If you want all of the values (sorted), you simply do:     my @values= @hash[@array]; So, if you want the 3rd key and value, you use:

    my $key= @array[2];
     my $value= $hash{$key};
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instead of, using your data structure:

    my $key= $array_of_hashes[2]{key};
    my $value= $array_of_hashes[2]{value};
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or     my( $key, $value )= @{$array_of_hashes[2]}{qw( key value )}; The original array and hash also store the data using quite a bit less memory.