#!/usr/bin/perl use Data::Dumper; # only for teaching purpose $Data::Dumper::Indent = 1; # dito :-) while() { chop; my($familyname,$memberstring) = split /\s--\s/,$_; my @members = split /, /,$memberstring; # tell each member that it's got a new family foreach my $member(@members) { push(@{$family{$member}},$familyname); } } print Dumper(\%family); # show the data structure in %family # now output a list of members with their families foreach my $member(sort keys %family) { print "$member can be found " . scalar(@{$family{$member}}) . ": " . join(" ", @{$family{$member}}) . "\n"; }