#!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; use List::Util qw(reduce); while () { chomp; my (@array) = split';',$_; my $ColumnNumber = reduce { $array[$a] >= $array[$b] ? $a : $b } 1..@array-1; print $ColumnNumber, "\n"; } =prints 3 3 2 =cut __DATA__ id001;10;10;30 id002;30;20;50 id003;30;80;10