note pvaldes <p>what about a simple list? i.e.:</p> <c> my @list = ('23/34', '34/56', '45/01');</c> <p>is trivial to convert this to the original pair with split, sort the list, etc</p> <c>foreach $pair(@list){ my ($x,$y) = split /\//, $pair, 2; print $y," is paired with ", $x, "\n"; } __END__ 34 is paired with 23 56 is paired with 34 01 is paired with 45 </c> 932460 932460