At first, I was tempted to overload +=, but than I realised that was not going to work, as hashes don't have any garanteed order.

So you really have to stick with the code you already have. Hmm. You always can write a sub, which names the function out loud:

sub add_hash_slice{
  my $slice = shift or return undef;
  my $hash1 = shift or return undef;
  my $hash2 = shift or return $hash1;
  
  $hash1->{$key} += $hash2->{$key} for my $key( @$slice );

  return $hash1;
} 

#call
add_hash_slice( \@fields, \%totals, \%delta);
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Alternativeley, if you have only values in the 'table', you can load it into PDL.

use PDL;

my $a = pdl $AoA;
$total1=sum($a->(':,0'));
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Hope this helps

Jeroen
"We are not alone"(FZ)