note btrott Hashes do not preserve insertion order. In other words, it is simply a fluke that your examples #1 and #2 print out the hash keys in the correct order; they are the exception rather than the rule.<p> If you just want the keys sorted alphabetically, use <code> for my $k (sort keys %GRAMMAR) { </code> But you may run into situations where you really do want to preserve insertion order, and it's not just a matter of sorting alphabetically.<p> If you want to preserve insertion order and still use a hash, take a look at [cpan://Tie::IxHash]. Or, if you're not wedded to a hash, you could always use an array, and push array refs onto your list of grammars: <code> push @GRAMMAR, [ $1, $2 ]; </code> And then when iterating: <code> for my $rec (@GRAMMAR) { print $rec->[0], "\n"; } </code> BTW, when you do a regex match w/ capturing parens, you really should check whether the regex successfully matches: <code> next unless /([A-Z]) -> (.*)/; $GRAMMAR{$1} = $2; </code> That way, if the regex fails--ie. the line you're looking at doesn't match that regex--you'll just skip that line. You don't want to use $1 and $2 if the match was unsuccessful, because there's no telling what they could contain. :) 89124 89124