My understanding is that you want to remove spaces from the keys of a hash. I think you need to remove the entry from the hash and create a new one. 

my %hash = (
    "apples   " => 4,
    "oranges   " => 5
    );

foreach my $words (keys %hash)
{
    my $elem = $hash{$words};
    delete $hash{$words};
    $words =~ s/\s*$//;
    $hash{$words} = $elem;
}
print %hash;

[download]

Your proposal would not run but giving the error message: 

delete argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice at hashdel.pl 
+line 5.

[download]

This is because delete removes an entry from a hash but does not modify the key or the value.

In reply to Re: Delete space at the end of a hash element by hdb
in thread Delete space at the end of a hash element by Dr Manhattan

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