#!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; # small snippet to explore dealing with complex data structures and duplicates/uniques and consolidation my %pets; my @info; #() below only signify that multiple elements possible in 3rd and 4th elements of $info[i] my $a ='Mary,Owens,"cat","white"'; my $b ='Bill,Thompson,"cat,dog","white,black"'; my $c ='Bill,Thompson,"hamster,cat","black,brown"'; my $d ='Bill,Smith,"goldfish,dog,turtle","yellow,spotted,green"'; push @info,$a,$b,$c,$d; #how to organize this data and loop thru to populate %pets from @info and extract output as below This is the part that I struggle with exit;