Sure, that would very easy. Suppose you wanted to use the third field as hashkey. Then get_parsed_lines would be changed to:

sub get_parsed_lines {
  my $file = shift;
  my $csv = Text::CSV_XS->new();
  my %hash;
  open my $in, '<', $file or die "Read failed: $!\n";
  while ( <$in> ) {
    $csv->parse( $_ ) or warn "Bad data: $_\n", next;
    my @row = $csv->fields();
    $hash{ $row[ 2 ] } = \@row;
  }
  close $in or die "Failed to close $file: $!\n";
  return \%hash;
}
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    $hash{ join( ',', @row[ 0, 2, 3] ) } = \@row;
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Hey thanks again that was what I ended up doing before I got a reply only problem is either I am displaying the data incorrectly on screen which is possible or all the values in the hass are the same. I only have 5 row cvs files that have 3 rows in common so the result is a 5 element hash problem is when I display the first value assigned in yhr ref'd array to a key it is always the same for every key which it definitely shouldn't be. what I am doing to display is a


foreach $hashkey (keys %hash){
   print "$hashkey has $hash{$hashkey}->[0] in first array element.\n"
+;
}
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and what I get is the same result for every key so maybe I am doing that wrong. Anyways thanks for the help in advance.


Update: Ok the data looks like "lastname","firstname","date". What happens is that the %hash ends up having the keys tied to "lastname" so what is happening is when I print out the hash to the screen I get like
Smith has Johnson in first array element.
Johnson has Johnson in first array element.
Laskey has Johnson in first array element.
and so on.