Problem solved. It was so simple I'm embarrased to explain what happened. Yet perhaps someone who is searching for answers in the future, may stumble across this node and get some clues to their problem.

The short answer to the problem was to look at everything. Not just the piece of code you think isn't working.

Both %hash1 and @array are read in from a file. See where this is headed? I did a chomp when I was reading in the data for %hash1, but forgot to do a chomp when I was reading in the data for @array.

%key3\n ne %key3
%key4\n ne %key4
[download]

Thanks to all for the suggestions.
Mike