my %seen; while () { chomp; my $line = $_; my @elements = split (",", $line); my $col_name = $elements[1]; my $col_type = $elements[5]; $seen{$col_name}++; } while ( my ( $col_name, $times_seen ) = each %seen ) { my $loc_total = $times_seen ; print " $col_name\t\t: $loc_total\n"; }