#!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; use Data::Dumper; my $tokens = "32,15,4,72,13,28,14"; my @tokens = (split/,/,$tokens); my %tokens = map {$_ => 1}@tokens; print Dumper (\%tokens); __END__ Prints: $VAR1 = { '4' => 1, '32' => 1, '28' => 1, '72' => 1, '13' => 1, '14' => 1, '15' => 1 };