in reply to Tricky hash value

what about this:
# sample related values my %val = ('14:00:00' => '200', '15:00:00' => '100', '16:00:00' => '300'); my @time = ('15:00:00','14:00:00','15:00:00','16:00:00'); my %hash; for (@time) { $hash{$_} += $val{$_}; }

Or am I misunderstanding the question?

cLive ;-)