No need to sort or transfer values to an array

use List::Util qw[ reduce ];
my $worstKey = reduce{ 
    $hash{ $a } < $hash{ $b } ? $a : $b 
} keys %hash;

print "The worst is $worstKey with a time of $hash{ $worstKey } minute
+s";
[download]

my $worst;
my $max = 0;
while ( my ( $key, $value ) = each %hash ) {
    if ( $value > $max ) {
        $worst = $key;
        $max = $value
    }
}
print "The worst process is $worst, with a time of $max minutes.\n";
[download]

This snippet assumes no two processes will take exactly the same length of time. However, if there are two that take the exact amount of time, only one of them will be shown. This may or may not be important to you.

Turn the hash inside-out, then sort the keys in descending order and pick the first.

  my %hash = (processone => 1, processtwo => 0.005, processthree => 3)
+;

  my %hash2 = map {$hash{$_} => $_} keys %hash;
  my $worst = (reverse sort keys %hash2)[0];
  print "the worst process is $hash2{$worst} with a time of $worst min
+utes\n";
[download]

Why all the excess complexity? sort { $h{$a} <=> $h{$b} } should be just fine here.

%hash = (processone => 1,
         processtwo => 0.005,
         processthree => 3);
@_ = sort { $hash{$a} <=> $hash{$b} } keys %hash;
print $_[0], ' => ', $hash{$_[0]}, " (lowest)\n";
print $_[-1], ' => ', $hash{$_[-1]}, " (highest)\n";
[download]

--
[ e d @ h a l l e y . c c ]

Hi,

Why create an extra hash?

print +(sort { $a <=> $b } values %hash)[-1];
[download]

The sort by default sorts alfanumeric, so in your case 30 is better than 4.

---------------------------
Dr. Mark Ceulemans
Senior Consultant
BMC, Belgium