Taking japhy's advice, I also qr'ed the items inside the @Messages array, and used the reference to the hash as suggested by VSarkiss. 
 open(RPT,">$DIR/$RPT")||die"Can't open $RPT: $!\n";
 print RPT "Report Date: $Date\n";
 print RPT "$RPT\n";
 print RPT "============================\n";
 my($key,$msg,$ref);
 foreach $key(keys %hash){
   $ref=$hash{$key};
   foreach $msg(@Messages){
     if($ref->{error_message}=~$msg and $ref->{date} eq $Date){
       print RPT "$ref->{packet_id}\t$ref->{origin}\n",
                 "$ref->{date}\t$ref->{qualifier}\n",
                 "$ref->{time}\t$ref->{terminal_id}\n",
                 "$ref->{device_id}\t\t$ref->{application_id}\n",
                 "$ref->{catalog_code}\t\t$ref->{function_id}\n",
                 "$ref->{status}\t\t$ref->{severity}\n",
                 "$ref->{error_message}\n",
                 "====================================================
+\n";
     }## END OF IF STATEMENT
   }## END OF INNER FOREACH STATEMENT
 }## END OF OUTER FOREACH STATEMENT
 close RPT;

[download]
Many thanks to all for your help.

TStanley
--------
"Suppose you were an idiot... And suppose you were a
member of Congress... But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain

In reply to Re: How could I make this code more optimized by TStanley
in thread How could I make this code more optimized by TStanley

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