For the second part of your question (well the stable/unstable part) I would just add a feild along side name and desc that was stable => 1 or 0 depending on weather or not its stable. Then its just a simple grep of the keys. my @stable = grep { $_->{stable} } @releases ; my $unstable = grep { ! $_->{stable} } @releases ; I have to agree this looks like something you should consider putting in a database. Unless you are building a nice interface to maintain the hashes too. :)