A hash is a set of unordered key/value pairs. If you do not change the hash, its ordering is stable. See keys and values for why this is important.

You really need to ...

use strict ;
use warnings ;
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... at the top of your script, and then fix the errors that come up. This will take you on a wonderful journey and go a long way toward solving your problem.

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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The elements of a hash can be obtained in some-sorted order using the each() function, with certain limitations.   And, you will sometimes see while loops which iterate over sort keys(hashvar).

The elements of an array do not change position, unless elements are inserted or removed.   The ordering of a hash should be considered by you to be “unpredictable.”   (A hash is designed to champion rapid and consistent access-speed, and retrieval order is the price that you pay.)

Thanks everyone for helping. I got the point.
I will surely use strict and warnings from now on.