There are two ways to initialize a hash; one is very similar to that of an array:

%hash = (
"key1", "value1", 
"key2", "value2",
"key3", "value3"
 );

Here the hash is initialized from a normal list, taking every two scalars as the key/value pair.
The other way is specific to the hash structure:

%hash = (
  key1 => "value1",
  key2 => "value2",
  key3 => "value3", 
  );

The => operator is similar to the comma, but it implicitly quotes the value to the left of it, treating it as a literal string. This is a more convenient method of initializing a hash, and we will use it almost exclusively in this course.
Here's an example, using our Best Picture data from the array examples:

%bestpix = ( 
   1990 => "Dances with Wolves", 
   1991 => "The Silence of the Lambs",
   1992 => "Unforgiven", 
   1993 => "Schindler's List", 
   1994 => "Forrest Gump",
   1995 => "Braveheart",
   1996 => "The English Patient",
   1997 => "Titanic",
   );

This creates a hash with the year of the award for the key and the title of the film for the value.