That's almost never a good idea. What you want is to use a hash of hashrefs, then key off that. 
my %data;
$data{"hash1"} = \%hash1;
$data{"hash2"} = \%hash2;
$data{"hash3"} = \%hash3;
...
for (sort keys %data) {
  subroutine($_, $data{$_});
}

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The subroutine will see the hashref, so dereference it to get at the rest of the data. And if you really don't need %hash1 by name then, even simpler! 
my %data;
$data{"hash1"} = { key1 => 25, key2 => 19, ... };
$data{"hash2"} = { key5 => 12, key8 => 'hi', ... };
$data{"hash3"} = { fred => 'flintstone', barney => 'rubble' };

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See perllol and perldsc and perlref for more info.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

In reply to Re: Using a hash key as another hash's name... by merlyn
in thread Using a hash key as another hash's name... by nega

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