Intriguing.....one concern, how would this work with multpile key/value pairs, say 20 pairs with 20 values each..(not extreme by any means). For the combo box I will need to access the keys and values discretely. Having an array ref, as I understand it and I could be wrong, means the entire value set is a single array entry at array[0].

In your proposal you get Name 'bob sally sue',

It got me thinking, and perhaps this is just restating your idea (and i apologize if it is) that I should either be using an array outright instead of a hash or use a hash of anon arrays...where 'bob', 'sally', 'sue' are entries 0, 1, 2 of teh anon array. Hmmmm....

Thanks for the chomp tip...head slap...:)