There are a couple of ways you can improve on this. First, you can access the last element of an array by using the index -1. I.e.

$sort[scalar @sort - 1] == $sort[-1];
[download]

Also, you can swap the values of two variables without a temporary variable in the middle:

($a, $b) = ($b, $a);  # swap the values of $a and $b
[download]

So your code can be rewritten like so:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use Data::Dumper;

my %hash = (Matt => 24,
            Dana => 19,
            Eric => 28,
            Sara => 20,
            John => 17,
            Mike => 23,);

print Dumper \%hash;

my @sort = sort {$hash{$a} <=> $hash{$b}} keys %hash;
($hash{$sort[0]}, $hash{$sort[-1]})
     = ($hash{$sort[-1]}, $hash{$sort[0]});

print Dumper \%hash;
[download]

-Matt

---

---

• Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

  <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>

• Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.