Thats a good start for sure, but I can't have the keys in

my %loc = (
    LA  => { NE => 1, E  => 1, SE => 1, S  => 1, SW => 1 },
    LB  => { NE => 1, SW => 1, W  => 1, NW => 1},
    LC  => { SE => 1, S  => 1, SW  => 1},
    LD  => { SE => 1, S  => 1, SW => 1},
);
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been the same in

my @locations = qw(LA LB LC LD LE);
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because they are codes that will have a different meaning; like LA comes back as "LeadAlpha" and it goes for all the other.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use warnings;

print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";

my @locations = qw(LAx LBy LCo LDe LEd);


my %loc = (
    LA  => { NE => 1, E  => 1, SE => 1, S  => 1, SW => 1 },
    LB  => { NE => 1, SW => 1, W  => 1, NW => 1},
    LC  => { SE => 1, S  => 1, SW  => 1},
    LD  => { SE => 1, S  => 1, SW => 1},
);

my %results = (
    LA => '1LA= NE|E|SE|S|SW',
    LB => '2LB= NE|SW|W|NW',
    LC => '3LC= SE|S|SW',
    LD => '4LD= SE|S|SW',
);

my $c_position = '';

foreach my $location (@locations) {
    my $test_loc = "Park: SW at 10 position"; #this could be for LA
    my $locs = substr $test_loc, 6, 2;
    $locs=~s/\s+//;


    $c_position .= ' ';
    if ($loc{$location}{$locs}) {
        $c_position .= $results{$location};
    } else {
        $c_position .= ' ALL OTHERS HERE.';
    }




}
print "Results= $c_position\n\n";
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