@hash{@a} = @b;
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is exactly the sort of thing I was looking for! Several other great examples have been posted, which I also appreciate and which are enlightening in their own ways. This particular approach, though, is what I meant by "Perl-ish" and "esthetic": it's a higher-level way of implementing the function that is both less work for the programmer, and more clear for potential readers--the sort of thing that Perl can excel at, compared to a language like C of Java.

Thanks, everyone!