#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; use Data::Dumper; my %duplicates; my $serials = [ [qw/ foo bar serial1 /], [qw/ who now serial2 /], [qw/ one more serial2 /], [qw/ two end serial3 /] ]; for my $row (@$serials) { my $clean = $row->[2]; push @{$duplicates{$clean}}, $row; } print Dumper \%duplicates; for my $clean (keys %duplicates) { my $aref = $duplicates{$clean}; if (@$aref > 1) { # if duplicates for my $row (@$aref) { print "@$row\n"; } } } #### C:\Old_Data\perlp>perl t7.pl $VAR1 = { 'serial3' => [ [ 'two', 'end', 'serial3' ] ], 'serial1' => [ [ 'foo', 'bar', 'serial1' ] ], 'serial2' => [ [ 'who', 'now', 'serial2' ], [ 'one', 'more', 'serial2' ] ] }; who now serial2 one more serial2