use Modern::Perl; my @two_d_array; my %dictionary; sub add_data { chomp @_; my $type = shift; my $datapoints = shift; state $sequence; push @two_d_array, [ split ',', $datapoints ]; $dictionary{$type} = $sequence++; } while ( my $species = ) { my $breaks = ; add_data( $species, $breaks ); } say "$_:\t@{ @two_d_array[ $dictionary{$_} ] }" for sort keys %dictionary; __DATA__ Chimp 71,22,15,10,51 Dog 91,82,28,11,91 Horse 11,72,37,58,20 Human 21,42,63,24,16 Monkey 81,32,53,54,42 Pig 10,13,99,12,25 Rat 9,17,87,33,11