Rereading your comment, do you mean just using a hashmap / dictionary, or do you mean writing your own hashing functions? The first is invaluable, but I have ne

Rereading your comment, do you mean just using a hashmap / dictionary, or do you mean writing your own hashing functions? The first is invaluable, but I have never had the need for the second (pretty sure you could define your own hashing functions in Perl, but I never found the need).