I have a rather large hash as such:

%hash{'key1'}{'key2'}='string'

I need to find key2 when string eq $1 from a previous regex. I would like to avoid another foreach because this hash can have over 1000 key1's and it is already nested inside 4 foreach loops.

That said, any solution is welcome, even with the foreach loops.

I have experimented a bit with grep but it seems to only work on arrays. I also had an idea to print the hash into a long string and then regex or grep it but it never led anywhere.

Update: my hash is 1:1 and I use this structure extensively and need to do this lookup just once. Using the reverse function did exactly what I needed. Thanks all.


In reply to fast hash search by ddoc

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.