use warnings; use strict; use Data::Dumper; chomp( my @data = ); my %fruits = map { lc($_) => 1 } @data; print "What do you want to remove?: ", join " " => @data, "\n", "Input: "; chomp( my $ans = lc() ); if ( $fruits{$ans} ) { print "Seen ", $ans, $/; delete $fruits{$ans}; } else { print $ans, " that item doesn't exist", $/; } print Dumper \%fruits; __DATA__ Apple Orange Grape