C:\Users\Bill\forums\monks>type abc.txt ID1 ABC12 ABC12 - ABC12 - ABC12 ID2 XYZ11 - - - XYZ11 - ID3 - - EFG21 EFG21 - EFG21 ID1072 - PQR34 PQR34 - PQR34 - C:\Users\Bill\forums\monks>type mao9856.pl #!perl -n use strict; use warnings; my @files = split; print shift @files, "\n"; my %uniq; $uniq{$_}++ foreach (@files) ; while (my($name, $count) = each %uniq) { print " ", $name, " ", $count, "\n"; } C:\Users\Bill\forums\monks>perl mao9856.pl abc.txt ID1 - 2 ABC12 4 ID2 XYZ11 2 - 4 ID3 - 3 EFG21 3 ID1072 PQR34 3 - 3