#!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; my $FILE1 = <) { chomp; # delete trailing \n # here I split on one or more space characters, # A tab char doesn't show up well on this forum's text my ($id, $value) = split (/\s+/, $_); push @{$ids{$id}}, $value; } } #Each key of the hash of %ids contains a reference to #an array of id's. This is called a HoA - Hash of Array foreach my $id (sort keys %ids) { print "$id @{$ids{$id}}\n"; } #This code will run very fast because each line is #only read one time - Input/Output (I/O) is very #"expensive" __END__ OUTPUT: ID1 50 20 ID2 60 100 ID3 100 10