#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; # https://perlmonks.org/?node_id=11146593 use warnings; my @mapped = ("Account Entity Unit Jan Feb Mar", "Account01 Entity01 Unit01 1 2 3", "Account01 Entity01 Unit01 4 5 6", "Account01 Entity01 Unit01 7 8 9", "Account02 Entity02 Unit02 10 11 12"); my %group_by; my @titles = split ' ', shift @mapped; foreach (@mapped) { my %hash; @hash{ @titles } = split; #don't get it NOTE makes a hash with titles as keys and fields of current line as values for(qw(Jan Feb Mar)){ $group_by{join ' ', @hash{qw(Account Entity Unit)}}{ $_ } += $hash{ $_ }; #don't get it either NOTE does the SUM function that your SQL is doing } } use Data::Dump 'dd'; dd \%group_by;