my @activated; my @inhibited; my $object=test_element; &inhibited_rec($object); print "@activated\n"; print "@inhibited\n"; sub inhibited_rec{ my @a=`awk '\$1 ~ /$_[0]/' useful_dat.tab |cut -f 2,3|sort|uniq`; foreach (@a){ my @b=split(/\t/,$_); if($b[1] eq 'Activation'){ } else{ push (@activated,$b[0]); &activated_rec($b[0]); } } } sub activated_rec{ my @a=`awk '\$1 ~ /$_[0]/' useful_dat.tab |cut -f 2,3|sort|uniq`: foreach (@a){ my @b=split(/\t/,$_); if($b[1] eq 'Activation'){ push (@activated,$b[0]); &activated_rec($b[0]); } else{ push (@inhibited,$b[0]); &inhibited_rec($b[0]); } } }