#!/usr/bin/perl my @array = map {int rand 1e6} 1..400000; # create file with numbers to look up open my $fh, ">", "in.txt" or die "$!"; for (1..1000000) { print $fh int rand 1e6, "\n"; } close $fh; my %lookup_table; $lookup_table{$_}++ for @array; open (in , "<", "in.txt") || die "$!"; while (){ my ($num) = m/^(\d+)/; print "$num, " if $lookup_table{$num}; } close in; __END__ $ time ./757954.pl >out real 0m4.141s user 0m4.004s sys 0m0.132s