note Enlil Something like so?<code> use warnings; use strict; use Data::Dumper; my %hash = (a => 3, b=> 4, c =>1 ,d=>7); my @sel = qw(b c); my %nhash; @nhash{@sel} = delete @hash{@sel}; print Dumper \%hash; print Dumper \%nhash; __END__ $VAR1 = { 'a' => 3, 'd' => 7 }; $VAR1 = { 'c' => 1, 'b' => 4 }; </code> <p>-enlil 488539 488539