Assuming that you know the hash name, and that it is a real hash, not a reference, this one would work.

Caveat! Your example has one key named "color" and the other named "colors". You should unify them.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use Data::Dumper;

my $other = 'somescript.pl';
my $find = '%some_hash';
open SCRIPT, "< $other"
    or die "can't open\n";

my $first = "";
my $hash_text = "";
while (<SCRIPT>) {
    if (!$first) {
        $first =  /$find/;
    }
    next unless $first;
    s/^\s*my $find/$find/;
    $hash_text .= $_;
    last if /\)/;
}
close SCRIPT;
my %some_hash;  # must be the same name as the hash in the other scrip
+t
eval $hash_text;

my %colors ;

for ( keys %some_hash) {
    for my $color ( split /,\s?/, $some_hash{$_}{colors}) {
        push @{$colors{$color}}, $_;
    }
}

print Data::Dumper->Dump([\%colors], ['colors']),$/;
__END__
$colors = {
            'blue' => [
                         'MASSACHUSETTS',
                         'NEW_YORK'
                       ],
            'green' => [
                          'NEW_YORK'
                        ],
            'black' => [
                         'NEW_YORK'
                       ],
            'white' => [
                          'MASSACHUSETTS'
                        ],
            'red' => [
                       'MASSACHUSETTS'
                     ]
          };

[download]

Notice that this code will break if your hash contains a literal ")". But just to give you the idea.

In reply to Re: sorting a hash that's in another file by dbwiz
in thread sorting a hash that's in another file by alienhuman

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.