Thanks for the answer. I looked at both Storable and Clone, and ruled Storable out because of performance. I got Clone from CPAN, installed, then ran it in the test. Looked okay, but checking the output, I found that it put a '\n' between the key and data in the cloned hash. Maybe there is an undocumented parameter to fix this. Either way, still looking, but thanks for the info.

Thank you

I found that it put a '\n' between the key and data in the cloned hash

That can only be an artifact of the way you are inspecting the cloned hash, because Clone::clone() adds nothing:

use Clone qw[ clone ];;

my $n = 0; 
my %hash = map{ $_, ++$n} 'a' .. 'e';;

pp \%hash;;
{ a => 1, b => 2, c => 3, d => 4, e => 5 }

my $copy = clone \%hash;;

pp $copy;;
{ a => 1, b => 2, c => 3, d => 4, e => 5 }
[download]

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I stand corrected.

I re-ran the test, and the raw output did not have the '\n'. But when I ran a numeric unix 'sort' on the raw file, it added a '\n' after the '\t' that I used to separate key and data. There are a lot of parms for sort, so I'm sure I need to add something

But Clone didn't do it!

Thank you

"Well done is better than well said." - Benjamin Franklin