http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=729003

(follow-up to Re: for loop error to handle identical keys at different nesting levels)

In case the two hashes are always structurally equivalent, you could use a "traversal-ID" ($id here) to make the keys unique by adding the ID to the keys. It's a bit of a hack because it relies on a number of assumptions, but hopefully, it helps...

For example, with a duplicate key 'a':

#!/usr/bin/perl use warnings; use strict; use Data::Dumper; my %xhash = ('a' => { 'b' => { 'e' => 'E', 'c' => 'C', 'content' => 'B ' }, 'content' => 'A ', 'd' => 'D', 'a' => 'Foo' }); my %c_hash=('a' => { 'addval' => { 'b' => { 'addval' => { 'e' => { 'addv +al' => {}, 'repv +al' => '5' }, 'c' => { 'addv +al' => {}, 'repv +al' => '3' } }, 'repval' => '2' }, 'd' => { 'addval' => {}, 'repval' => '4' }, 'a' => { 'addval' => {}, 'repval' => '99' }, }, 'repval' => '1' }); my $id; sub traverse { my ($hash, $callback, $mode, $start_id) = @_; return unless ref($hash) eq "HASH"; $id = $start_id if defined $start_id; for my $key (sort keys %$hash) { my $val = $hash->{$key}; if (ref($val) eq "HASH") { traverse($val, $callback, $mode); if ($mode eq "collect") { if (exists $val->{repval}) { $id++; $callback->("$key-$id", $val->{repval}); } } } if ($mode eq "replace") { $id++ unless $key eq "content"; $callback->("$key-$id", $val, $hash); } } } my %repl; # lookup table: a => 1, etc. traverse(\%c_hash, sub { my ($key, $val) = @_; $repl{$key} = $val; }, "collect", 0 ); # print Dumper \%repl; # debug traverse(\%xhash, sub { my ($key, $val, $href) = @_; if (exists $repl{$key}) { my $newkey = $repl{$key}; my ($oldkey) = split /-/, $key; $href->{$newkey} = $val; delete $href->{$oldkey}; } }, "replace", 0 ); print Dumper \%xhash; __END__ $VAR1 = { '1' => { '4' => 'D', '99' => 'Foo', 'content' => 'A ', '2' => { '3' => 'C', 'content' => 'B ', '5' => 'E' } } };