powerhouse,
When you the % sigil for a hash (%hash =), you are saying:

Assign the entire hash to

To assign an individual key/value pair try:

$hash{'key1'} = 4;
$hash{'key2'} = 5;
[download]

You will notice that the % sigil has change to a $. Remember that $ looks like the s in scalar. It means just a single piece of data. When you get a little more advanced, you can check out hash slices.

There are plenty of resources for learning Perl:

http://learn.perl.org/ which even has free on-line books

Perl FAQ for frequently asked questions

Perlmonks Q&A

Learning Perl - (dead tree) O'Reilly

Cheers and keep trying

L~R

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