#!/home/mhough/perl/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; use Data::Dumper; my %outhash = (abc => 1, def => undef); my %outhash2 = %outhash1 print Dumper(\%outhash, \%outhash2); foreach my $str (qw/abc def ghi/) { $outhash{$str}? ($outhash{$str}++) : ($outhash{$str} = 1); $outhash2{$str}++; } print Dumper(\%outhash, \%outhash2);