thanks so much for your input...I am almost done with this assignment and got thru the user input section...now I have to run a subroutine to print out the array and hashes...of course I have encountered a problem...

the assignment states to run a subroutine on the @item array and then go thru the two hashes (%qty and %price) and print out each value associated with the $itemname

so here is my code and I cannot get it to print out the associated values in the hashes that are associated with the $itemname key

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
#cash register program

my %qty=();
my %price=();

#####User input here#####

 print "Please enter your first and last name\n";
  chomp (my $name = <STDIN>);

 print "Please enter your state sales tax in percentage\n";
  chomp (my $tax = <STDIN>);

##### enter loop to capture customer information here#####

my $continue='Y';
  while ($continue eq 'Y'){
      print "Please enter an item or product name\n";
        chomp ($itemname = <STDIN>);
        push @item, $itemname;

      print "Please enter the quantity of the item\n";
        chomp ($itemquantity  = <STDIN>);
        $qty{$itemname} = $itemquantity;
        my @qty = values %qty;

      print "Please enter the price of the item\n";
        chomp ($itemprice = <STDIN>);
        $price{$itemname} = $itemprice;
        @price=%price;
        my @price = values %price;

      print "Would you like to add another item? - Y or N\n";
      chomp ($continue = <STDIN>);
 }

##### process information with a subroutine here #####


foreach $item (@item) {
 print "Item: $item\n";
 print "@qty\n";
 print "@price\n";
}
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I am learning as I go thru this but I know it is a slow process for me - thanks for your advice monks