in reply to Re^5: promoting array to a hash
in thread promoting array to a hash

Sorry ;). I was referring to the comment in the OP's code #reduces a file to a sorted list of unique words.

For the more general case your method is better.

Examine what is said, not who speaks.
"Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham
"Think for yourself!" - Abigail

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom