http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=1028037


in reply to Need Help in processing a file

Some Perl Poetry for You: 

use strict;
my%a;my@a=split/ /,<DATA>;
while(@a){
  my($a,$n)=splice@a,0,2;
  $a{$a}=$n>$a{$a}?$n:$a{$a};
}
print join " ", %a;
__DATA__
a.txt 4 b.txt 3 z.txt 1 a.txt 5 b.txt 2 b.txt 4 z.txt 2

[download]

Now you only need to sort out the sorting...

UPDATE under Seussian Perl

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom