foreach my $grp (sort keys %grp_advise) {
#some stuff
}
[download]

Sort the keys of the hash and do whatever is in the foreach loop to each of them :)

You don't say what order you want the data back in. If you want alphabetical order by key, that's easy:

foreach my $grp (sort keys %grp_advise) {
...
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If you want them back in the order you added them, that's not possible with a perl hash. Or at least, it's substantially more difficult. ;-)

Not conceptually that much more difficult, you just have to maintain an array and push the key to it every time you add a key to your hash, then to get the output in the order it went in something like:

foreach my $key (@ordered) {
    ...
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----------
My cow-orkers were talking in punctuation the other day. What disturbed me most was that I understood it.

Or, for those who prefer their solutions already coded, use Tie::IxHash.

Nevtlathiel,
you just have to maintain an array and push the key to it every time you add a key

It is actually a bit more complicated than that though none of the problems can't be overcome. If you delete a key you either need to splice out the corresponding array element or do an exists test when looping over the array. If you change a key's value should it then go to the end or stay put? I am not saying that it is isn't that simple in specific cases, but in general it is usually better to just use an already made wheel:

• Tie::IxHash
• Tie::Hash::Indexed
• Tie::InsertOrderHash
• Tie::LLHash

Cheers - L~R

my @grp_advise = (
                       "normal,random,sequential",
                       "willneed,dontneed,free",
                       "access_lwp,access_many,access_default"
              );

for (my $grp_index = 0; $grp_index <= $#grp_advise; $grp_index++) {
        print "$grp_index  ===> $grp_advise[$grp_index]\n";

}
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# change foreach
(keys %grp_advise)
# into
(sort keys %grp_advise)
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keys HASH
  Returns a list consisting of all the keys of the named hash. (In
  scalar context, returns the number of keys.) The keys are
  returned in an apparently random order. The actual random order
  is subject to change in future versions of perl, but it is
  guaranteed to be the same order as either the "values" or "each"
  function produces (given that the hash has not been modified).
  As a side effect, it resets HASH's iterator.

use strict;
use warnings;
use Tie::IxHash;

tie my %hash_var, 'Tie::IxHash';

%hash_var = (
           "grp1" => "normal,random,sequential",
           "grp2" => "willneed,dontneed,free",
           "grp3" => "access_lwp,access_many,access_default"
 );


#Print the hash
foreach my $grp (keys %hash_var) {
        my $advise_value = $hash_var{$grp};
        print "$grp ===> $advise_value\n";

}
[download]

http://www.devdaily.com/perl/edu/qanda/plqa00016/