use warnings; use strict; my @data = qw/0 6:4 12:8 19:31/; my %nums = map { ( $_ => undef ) } 0 .. 31; map { local @_ = sort { $a <=> $b } split /:/; for (my $n = $_[0]; $n < ( @_ == 1 ? $_[0] + 1 : $_[1] + 1 ); $n++ ) { delete $nums{$n}; } } @data; print "$_\n" foreach sort keys %nums;