foreach my $recid ( reverse sort %SeqOrders ) ... #### $ perl -MData::Dump -e '%x = qw{a 1 b 2 c 3}; dd \%x; dd { reverse sort %x }' { a => 1, b => 2, c => 3 } { 2 => 1, a => 3, c => "b" } #### my %rev_seq = reverse %SeqOrders; for my $recid (sort keys %rev_seq) { ... }