my $columnFile = q{re-organized.txt}; open my $columnFH, q{<}, $columnFile or die qq{open: < $columnFile: $!\n}; my @results; while ( <$columnFH> ) { my @cols = split; foreach my $idx ( 0 .. $#tests ) { foreach my $subidx ( 0 .. $#{ $tests[ $idx ] } ) { my @posns = split m{,}, $tests[ $idx ]->[ $subidx ]; $results[ $idx ]->[ $subidx ] ++ if scalar @posns == grep { q{z} eq $cols[ $_ ] } @posns; } } } close $columnFH or die qq{close: < $columnFile: $!\n};