I am trying to find the first name that exist in a hash. The keys in the hash are in alphabetical order. When I ran the following code, it will not find "ALEX".

Here is my code:

my %WORD =
('AALIYAH', 'AARON', 'ABBE' , 'ABBEY', 'ABBI', 'ABBIE', 'ABBIGAIL', 'ALEX');
$name = "ALEX B. WILLIAM";
$name =~ /^(\w+) /;
print "WORD = $1\n" if (exists $WORD{$1});

If I re-organize the hash key into something like below, it will find "ALEX".

my %WORD = ('AALIYAH', 'AARON', 'ALEX', 'ABBE', 'ABBEY', 'ABBI', 'ABBIE', 'ABBIGAIL');

Any idea or suggestion?

Thank you.

In reply to Exists in HASH issue by wsee

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