tux$ cat test.pl #!/pro/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; my @data = (1, 3, 4, 5, 3, 6, 8, 4, 9); $" = ", "; print "(@data)\n"; { my %seen; @data = grep { !$seen{$_}++ } @data; } print "(@data)\n"; tux$ perl test.pl (1, 3, 4, 5, 3, 6, 8, 4, 9) (1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9)