my @items; push @items, { name => 1, keywords => [ qw( b ) ] }, { name => 2, keywords => [ qw( b c ) ] }, { name => 3, keywords => [ qw( b c ) ] }, { name => 4, keywords => [ qw( b d ) ] }, { name => 5, keywords => [ qw( e ) ] }, { name => 6, keywords => [ qw( e f ) ] }; my %freq; for (@items) { for (@{ $_->{keywords} }) { $freq{$_}++; } } my @nodes; for (@items) { my @keywords = sort { $freq{$b} <=> $freq{$a} } @{ $_->{keywords} }; my $path = join "/", @keywords, $_->{name}; push @nodes, $path; } print "$_\n" for sort @nodes