use Modern::Perl; my @ref = qw/aap noot mies wim zus jet teun vuur gijs lam kees bok/; while (my $in = ){ chomp $in; while (my ($index, $value) = each @ref) { if ($value=~ m/$in/){ say "$in : $value : $ref[$index + 2]"; } } } __DATA__ a e i o u aa ee ie oo uu