You could put all the values in array references indexed by your two-level hash. Something like this:
foreach $f (@files) { open FILE, $f or die "Error: $!"; while(<FILE>) { chomp; my ($k,$v)=split("=",$_,2); # Assume dn= comes before other lines $level1=$k, next if $k eq "dn"; unless ($level1) { die "Need to get dn= line first\n"; } push @{$hash{$level1}{$k}}, $v; } close FILE; }
Then you will have something like this:
$hash{machinename}{config}=["2000"] $hash{machinename}{speed}=["19200"] $hash{machinename}{setting}=["value1", "value2", "value3"] $hash{machinename2}{config}=["2020"] etc.
And then do comparisons or anything else you need. See chapter 4 of The Perl Cookbook for examples of how to do fancy array operations, including comparisons.

In reply to RE: RE: Re: Multiple identical keys in a hash. by ZZamboni
in thread Multiple identical keys in a hash. by ChuckularOne

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.