Why the question mark? Tie::IxHash is the canonical module for this kind of job.

As an interesting sidenote to the OP: (s)he pretty much described how it works:

I could sorta do it with a pair of arrays and an index variable, but I like being able to reference an element by its key.
Well: the object behind the tied hash comprises of a pair of arrays, one for the keys and one for the values, and a hash, which points towards the index in these arrays for any key.

An alternative implementation, which would likely be a little more compact, would be to use just one hash and one array. For example, the hash could work in the normal way, and the array would contains the ordered keys. But there are other schemes.

In reply to Re: Re: Ordered Hashes by bart
in thread Ordered Hashes by Sprad

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.