hey thank you for the good pointer to that website.. I really like Mark Dominus's articles...
the fact that I understood where he was going w/ below code got me really happy... After about close to year of struggle w/ perl(and still struggling mightly w/ it), I feel I have some understanding in some area~<very very limited>
thanks again!

        for my $k (keys %hash) {
          if ($k eq "name") {
            $hash{$k}++;
          }
        }
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