Just a few observations that might clean up your implementation.

• Don't forget to chomp.

• No need to do the $hash{$key} ||= []; thing. Yes, it creates a key pointing to an anonymous array. But so does your push function in the next line. Even with use warnings; you don't need the ||= thing.

• I don't see any advantage to pushing $_ into the anonymous array, while discarding $rest. I would think the way to go would be to use the three argument version of split so that you can limit split's output to two items; one containing the key, and one containing everything else. Your current code puts the key in $key, the first value in $rest, tosses out all the rest of the values, and then ultimately tosses out $rest too, only to push everything into the anon-array. Kinda wierd, IMHO.

See later in this thread for what I believe is an implementation closer to the OP's needs.

---

---

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! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

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:
	&		&
	<		&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.