New to perl so I decided to start with something simple, I'm attempting to create a simple anagram generator (without cheating by looking at other code). I have a text file dictionary that I'm trying to use to fill a hash. I tested it first with an array and it worked just fine. However when I try to fill a hash with it it fails to enter any keys or values for that hash. 
#!usr/local/bin/perl

my $userinput = "myexample";
my $wordfile = '/home/psychohamster/Desktop/Desktop_Stuff/AnagramWordL
+ist';
my $wordcount = 0;
my $deadstring = "";

my %hashlist = ();

open my $wordhandle, $wordfile or die "Unable to open WordList: $!";

while (<$wordhandle>) {
$deadstring = chomp;
$hashlist{$deadstring} => 1;

$wordcount++;

}


$wordcount -= 1;

if (!%hashlist)
{ print "Empty\n"; }
else { print "Not Empty\n"; }

[download]
The last print statement always returns empty, now if i put a Key and a value in the hash declaration it will accept it. I just can not add any more hashes after run time. What am I missing?

In reply to Attempting to fill a hash by TwistedTransistor

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