use Data::Dumper; my @inst = ( 'AAA', 'ATG', 'TTT', 'GTC' ); get_pwm(@inst); sub get_pwm { my @data = @_; my %pwm; foreach my $line (@data) { ++$pwm{ substr $line, $_, 1 }[$_] for 0 .. length($line) - 1; } my $n = $.; @$_ = map { $_ ? $_ / $n : 0 } @$_ for values %pwm; # Line 26 print Dumper \%pwm; print "$_ => @{ $pwm{ $_ } }" for keys %pwm; return; }