The order of an array is fixed, eg. $alex[1] is always 44. The order of an hash is not fixed! See perlintro for more info about hash/array.

You should use strict and warning in your code. There is an error in the code: $heather('joe') should be $heather{'joe'}, since you defined an hash %heather but there is no array @heather

Use Dumper to look at the data.

use strict;
use warnings;

use Data::Dumper;

my @alex = ( fred => 44, 'joe' => 2983, mike => -94  );  
print Dumper( \@alex );
my %heather = ('This', 'will', 'actually', 'work');
print Dumper( \%heather );
%heather = @alex;
print Dumper( \%heather );

print "C: [$heather{'fred'}] [$heather{'mike'}] [$heather{'joe'}] ", "
+[$heather{'This'}]\n";
$heather{'dingbat'} = 33; 
$heather{'giggles'} = 870;
print Dumper( \%heather );
@alex = %heather;
print Dumper( \@alex );
print "D: @alex\n";
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