file 1 (test) chr1 30 chr2 20 chr2 50 chr3 80 file 2 (reference) chr1 40 chr1 50 chr2 60 chr2 80 chr3 100 #### output chr1 10 chr2 40 chr2 10 chr3 20 #### #!/usr/bin/env perl use strict; use warnings; my ( @cols, $p1, $p2, $p3, $p4, @sec, @cols2 ); @ARGV or die "No input file specified"; open my $first , '<',$ARGV[0] or die "Unable to open input file: $!"; open my $second,'<', $ARGV[1] or die "Unable to open input file: $!"; print scalar <$first>; <$second>; #...throw away first line... while (<$first>) { @cols = split /\s+/; $p1 = $cols[0]; $p2 = $cols[1]; #print $p1; while (<$second>) { @cols2 = split /\s+/; $p3 = $cols2[0]; $p4 = $cols2[1]; if ($p3 eq $p1) { print "yes"; } } }