Also, how can I make this hash accessible outside of the while loop I had it created in? Is there a way to create global variables from local ones?

At a guess, you're looking for something like this: declare the hash variable outside your loop.

my %hash;
while (<>) {
    $hash{$_}++;
}

# %hash is accessible outside the while() loop
print join ', ' keys %hash;
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If that's not what you're looking for, post a short excerpt of your code so we can see what you mean.