Thanks for the reply, jwkrahn! I'm still not sure how to work this into a charnames alias list, though. This: 
#!/usr/bin/perl

use charnames ":alias" => { map { $_ => $char++ }
  'first character',
  'second character',
  'third character'
};

printf "First: %X; third: %X\n",
  ord("\N{first character}"),
  ord("\N{third character}");

[download]
produces the error: 
Unknown charname 'first character' at ./mytest line 10, within string
Execution of ./mytest aborted due to compilation errors.

[download]
So it accepts the syntax of the alias setup, but doesn't actually create the aliases.

If you're suggesting I use your assignment statement as written and then use your $characters variable to do the alias setup, I can't even find the right syntax for that. This gives syntax errors on the use charnames line, as I would expect (as did a couple variants I tried): 

#!/usr/bin/perl

$characters = { map { $_ => $char++ }
  'first character',
  'second character',
  'third character'
};

use charnames ":alias" => $characters;

[download]

In reply to Re^2: create an anonymous hash using "map" by raygun
in thread create an anonymous hash using "map" by raygun

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