in reply to dynamically creating the name of a hash key-name

You know, if the counts are linear and start at 1 or 0 you might want to consider making a Hash of Arrays. Then you could write that: $seg{age}[$count]="bleagh"

That migh be especially nice if you later want to work thru all the $counts under "age".

--
$you = new YOU;
honk() if $you->love(perl)