csc,tech,base
csc,comp,acm
csc,mous,base
new,this,that
other,some,sing
other,some,sels

##</code><code>##

use SuperSplit;
use HTML::Table;

$data = supersplit_open( ',', 'table.txt');

##</code><code>##

@firstcol = map { $$_[0]  } @$data;
@numbers = (1) x scalar(@firstcol); # init to (1,1,1,...)

for ($i = $#firstcol; $i > 0; $i--) {
        if ($firstcol[$i] eq $firstcol[$i-1]) {
                $numbers[$i-1] = $numbers[$i]+1;
                $numbers[$i] = 0;
        }
}

##</code><code>##

$table = new HTML::Table;
$table -> setBorder(2);
foreach $row (@$data) {
        $table->addRow( @$row );
}
# $table->print;

##</code><code>##

foreach $rowno (0..$#firstcol) {
    if ($numbers[$rowno]) {
        $table->setCellRowSpan($rowno+1, 1, $numbers[$rowno]);
        $table->setRowVAlign($rowno+1, "TOP")
    };
}

$table->print;