use strict; use warnings; my @aoa; while () { chomp; push @aoa,[split '',$_]; } foreach my $col(0..$#{$aoa[0]}){ print "Column $col: ", (join ' ',map { $aoa[$_][$col] } 0..$#aoa), "\n"; } __DATA__ ACATCACCTC ACATCACCTC ACATCACCTC ACATCACCTC # out Column 0: A A A A Column 1: C C C C Column 2: A A A A Column 3: T T T T Column 4: C C C C Column 5: A A A A Column 6: C C C C Column 7: C C C C Column 8: T T T T Column 9: C C C C