comment on

"..Numerically sort the 'verse' keys before printing to get the correct order..."

Agreed 100%. Original POST corrected.

"..I would question your departure from the array-based nature of verse storage in the first place.."

Reference for each of the verses separately informed that decision of mine.
If I have done, like so:

    
     ...
     else {
        push @{ $bible{$book}{$chapter}{'verses'} }, $_;
    }
[download]

Then output would have been like so:

"Genesis" => {
    "chapter 1" => {
                     verses => [
                       "1 In the beginning God created the heavens and
+ the earth.",
                       "2 The earth was without form, and void; and da
+rkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hoverin
+g over the face of the waters.",
                     ],
                   },
    "chapter 2" => {
                     verses => [
                       "1 Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the 
+host of them, were finished. ",
                       "2 And on the seventh day God ended His work wh
+ich He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work w
+hich He had done.",
                     ],
                   },
  },
[download]

which ofcourse is cool and probably faster [ not tested though ]. But I thought, what if we decides to refer to each of the verses?

"..I would also question how your book/chapter/verse parsing would handle books like "1 Corinthians", "2 Thessalonians", etc.,.."

One can of course use the roman numbering like "1 Corinthians", "2 Thessalonians" would then be "I Corinthians", "II Thessalonians", "III John", etc

Finally, like I said in mine OP and you rightly pointed out this is all critically dependent on the exact format of the data johnko is parsing, which is not revealed to us

If you tell me, I'll forget.
If you show me, I'll remember.
if you involve me, I'll understand.
--- Author unknown to me

In reply to Re^3: join all elements in array reference by hash by 2teez
in thread join all elements in array reference by hash by johnko

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