note karlgoethebier <p>Perhaps you can do it with <c>List::Pairwise</c> instead?</p> <c> use List::Pairwise qw(grepp); # grep hash subset my %subset1 = grepp {$a =~ /^ba/} %hash; my %subset2 = grepp {$b < 5} %hash; </c> <p>See [cpan://List::Pairwise]</p> <blockquote>"...and my files are huge"</blockquote> <p>I don't know how your files look. Perhaps you can provide an example...</p> <p>I'm just guessing. Regards, Karl</p> <!-- Node text goes above. Div tags should contain sig only --> <div class="pmsig"><div class="pmsig-1001958"> <p>«The Crux of the Biscuit is the Apostrophe»</p> </div></div> 1010615 1010615