While I agree that hashes wouldn't be too useful here (being unordered), I think of hashes as having three basic uses (not one):

• Unordered set of associations (Notice the plural var name)

  my %user_passwds = (
     joe  => ...,
     jeff => ...,
     john => ...,
  );
  [download]

• Unordered set of properties (Notice the singular var name)

  my %user = (
     id       => 'joe',
     name     => 'Joe',
     passwd   => ...,
     home_dir => ...,
  );
  [download]

• Uniqueness constraint

  my %unique;
  ++$unique{$_} foreach @list;
  @list = keys %unique;
  [download]

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