Athanasius: Thanks for your quick reply. The information you gave me makes sense. I made the change but I get an error that states: "Use of uninitialized value $fruits in concatenation (.) or string at asstl.pl line 28, <STDIN> line 1. Here is my updated code: 
### create a hash
my %fruit_num = ( apple => 3,
                  bananas => 1,
                  oranges => 2,
                  );

### promp the user to enter a key
### use the input to dispaly the value with that key.

print "Which fruit do you whish to query? ";
my $fruit = <STDIN>;
chomp $fruit;

my $fruits = $fruit_num{$fruit};

print "Number of" . $fruit . "is" . $fruits . " \n";

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I have even tried taken out the concatenation on the print line but still get an error. Any help would be appreciated. Randy

In reply to Re^2: Hash from prompt by rshoe
in thread Hash from prompt by rshoe

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