#!/usr/bin/perl -wT use strict; my @a_array = qw( a c f r f z t ); my @b_array = qw( e c s f r f) ; my %b_hash; $b_hash {$_} ++ for @b_array; my @c_array = map {($_) x ($b_hash {$_} || 0)} @a_array; print "@c_array\n"; __END__ c f f r f f