As you'll probably find out, asking for help with homework isn't looked on too favorably here

thank you for your input...I know you probably get asked for homework help all the time. I do want to do it myself otherwise I won't be able to go on with the rest of the book. I just feel like this program was a big jump from the chapter 6 homework

in answer to your questions:

2) is the loop something that occurs a set number of times, or should it keep occurring until a given condition changes?

the loop of user input keeps occuring - thru every loop (enter product name, enter quantity and price) the user is asked if they want to enter another product - when they answer "no" is when you leave the loop and invoke a subroutine to process the data

Thanks so much monks...I do appreciate your time

You may like an innoculation: try working through the Tutorial exercise material here. You might like to look at some of the other tutorial material too. Look for "Getting Started with Perl" here.

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Perl is Huffman encoded by design.

Ok, since you've said that the user input needs to happen repeatedly, that tells you that you want the user input to happen inside a loop. Since you've said that you want to keep looping *while* a certain condition isn't met (the user says 'no'), that tells you that you want a while loop.

Personally I like to use psuedo-code - something that is half-way between English (or whatever your native tongue) and code - and then gradually replace the pseudo-code with real code. Here's how I'd start with your assignment:

    user_wants_to_continue is 'yes'
    while ( user_wants_to_continue is not 'no' ) {
        prompt for and get product_name
        prompt for and get quantity
        prompt for and get price
        store product_name in array
        store product_name, quantity, price in hash
        prompt for and get user_wants_to_continue
     }