I'm a firm believer in doing empirical testing so I wrote a little sniglet of code: 

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use Data::Dumper;

my @ingredients = (
                    [ qw / onions diced / ],
                    [ qw / potatos diced / ],
                    [ qw / paprika spicy / ],
                    [ qw / salt shaken / ],
                    [ qw / pepper fresh / ]

                    );
my $hash_browns={};

foreach my $ingredient (@ingredients){
    $hash_browns -> { $ingredient -> [0] } = $ingredient -> [1];
}

foreach my $key ( keys %$hash_browns ){
    printf "%s\t%s\n",$key,$hash_browns->{$key};
}

[download]

When I run this code three times I get something like this: 

[pberghol@cowdawg hash]$ perl hash.pl
salt    shaken
onions  diced
pepper  fresh
paprika spicy
potatos diced
[pberghol@cowdawg hash]$ perl hash.pl
salt    shaken
onions  diced
pepper  fresh
paprika spicy
potatos diced
[pberghol@cowdawg hash]$ perl hash.pl
salt    shaken
onions  diced
pepper  fresh
paprika spicy
potatos diced

[download]
Looks pretty much the same to me.

Now, I'm not sure why this is all important, but if I were looking for random behavior, I'd program for it and not count on a "freak of nature" in my programming language of choice to give it to me. On the other hand if predictable behavior is what I want, again I'll program for that.

Peter L. Berghold -- Unix Professional
Peter -at- Berghold -dot- Net; AOL IM redcowdawg Yahoo IM: blue_cowdawg

In reply to Re: random behaviour of perl hashes by blue_cowdawg
in thread random behaviour of perl hashes by evilgoblin

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.