Hmm. Well, TMTOWTDI, but I really wouldn't use this if my hash were even slightly large; why use a hash at all if you're going to loop through each key every time you need to do an insert? You'd be better off using a sorted array that you could do a binary search on, or something such.

This is particularly bad if the hash is multi-dimensional. If I wanted to do the equivalent of

$hash{foo}{bar}{baz} = 2;
[download]

using your looping method, I'd have to loop over *three* arrays (for the three different keys).

I'm not saying you're wrong--I'm just saying that the tie method is, in most cases, a much better and more general solution.