$ perl -we 'my %rule = ("suffix1", "foo", "succ1", "bar"); warn join("/", @rule{qw"suffix1 succ1"})' Scalar value @rule{qw"suffix1 succ1"} better written as $rule{qw"suffix1 succ1"} at -e line 1. foo/bar at -e line 1. $ perl -v This is perl, v5.10.1 (*) built for x86_64-linux ...