#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; use Data::Dumper; my @data; while (<>){ chomp; push @data, [split /,/]; } print Dumper \@data; __END__ ~/PerlMonks$ perl test.pl data.txt $VAR1 = [ [ '1', '5', '7', '8', '9', '10', '11', '3', '3', '5', '5', '5', '7', '2', '2' ], [ '2', '6', '7', '8', '9', '15', '17', '3', '4', '5', '6', '5', '7', '2', '3' ] ];