my $ht = \%h1;
while ( my ( $key, $value ) = each(%$ht) ) {
   ...
}
[download]

Thanks ikegami, your idea gets me closer however, I get no output. Looks like I'm still doing something incorrect. Below is my actual test script:

use warnings;
use strict;

my $COLOR=2;
my $hm="";
my $ht="";

my %h1 = (
                   "1" => "blue"
);

my %h2 = (
                   "2" => "green"
);

if ( $COLOR == 1 ) {
     $ht=\%h1;
}
elsif ( $COLOR == 2 ) {
     $ht=\%h2;
}

sub geth {

      while ((my $key, my $value) = each(%$ht)) {
          if ( $key == $COLOR ) {
              $hm=$value;
          }
      }
         print "$hm\n";
}
[download]

I don't know why you have two hashes in the first place.

my %colors = (
   "1" => "blue",
   "2" => "green",
);

my $COLOR = 2;  # 1..2

sub geth {
   print "$colors{$COLOR}\n";
}

geth();
[download]

Or why you aren't using an array.

my @colors = (
   "blue",
   "green",
);

my $COLOR = 1;  # 0..1

sub geth {
   print "$colors[$COLOR]\n";
}

geth();
[download]

It appears that geth() is never called. If I fix that, the output is "green".

Is it just me or is each an usability fail? I prefer traversing hashes with either keys or values.

my $ht = \%h1;
for my $key ( keys %{$ht} ){ 
    my $val = $ht->{$key};
    ...
}
[download]

---

print+qq(\L@{[ref\&@]}@{['@'x7^'!#2/"!4']});

The use of each is that it's not a memory hog. When you loop over keys, Perl has somewhere built a list of all the keys in the hash. This is especially disastrous when the hash is tied to some huge data set.

The real problem with each is that every hash has only one iterator, and if you drop out of a loop that's walking the hash, the next loop that tries to walk that hash will start where the first left off.

use warnings;
use strict;

my $COLOR=2;
my $hm="";
my $ht="";

my %h1 = (
                   "1" => "blue"
);


my %h2 = (
                   "2" => "green"
);

if ( $COLOR == 1 ) {
     $ht=\%h1;
}
elsif ( $COLOR == 2 ) {
     $ht=\%h2;
}

sub geth {

      while ((my $key, my $value) = each(%$ht)) {
          if ( $key == $COLOR ) {
              $hm=$value;
          }
      }
         print "$hm\n";
}
[download]

Read the help other people have given you already, you still aren't calling geth() anywhere.

---

www.jasonkohles.com
We're not surrounded, we're in a target-rich environment!

I can't believe I missed that. Thanks Jason for pointing that out and my oppologies for the oversight! It actually works after all. Thanks to Ikegami as well for the original solution