I am trying to do the following

I have some data which looks like

1,ABC,X,1.203000e+02
1,ABC,Y,7.830000e+00
2,DEF,X,1.212400e+02
2,DEF,Y,8.810000e+00
3,GHI,X,1.180700e+02
3,GHI,Y,8.550000e+00
5,JKL,X,1.193500e+02
5,JKL,Y,7.270000e+00
.
.
.
[download]

Anyway, I want to use the first column in each line as a unique key for a hash, (e.g. 1,2,3,5 .. and so on). I am doing this as follows

while (<NEWDATA>){ # where NEWDATA points to a file with the comma del
+imited data
    $currLine = $_; # current, comma-delimited line
    chomp $currLine;
    @formatDataArray = split(/,/,$currLine); #split at comma
    push (@newArray, $formatDataArray[0]); # push first column into ne
+wArray
#    print OUT "@newArray\n";
}

foreach my $item(@newArray){ # get unique array elements
    $seen{$item}++;
}

# numerical sort on keys and add to array
@uniq = sort {$seen{$a} <=>  $seen{$b} } keys %seen;

# print to see if things look right
foreach my $element(@uniq){
    print OUT "$element\n";
}
[download]

the results of the print command at the end are still random, i.e. not

1
2
3
5
[download]

Any ideas. I am sure I am overlooking something very trivial.

mndoci

"What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence. The question is, what can you make people believe that you have done?"-Sherlock Holmes in 'A study in scarlet'