As part of a perl script,I am attempting to have two lists compared with one another. Each element of both lists is composed of a literal value (a name) and numerical value. I wish to match literal values (ie the names), but as I attempt to do so, as it were, via iterators (I've tried to loop each list through for, foreach and while) and conditional statements, I find the interpreter matching each name on both lists, equivalent or not. To exemplify, I need to compare @a with @b. List @a and list @b, similarly, are composed of strings of this form: "name" "value"\n. the record seperator being a space. The script splits them correctly (they print out as list of names and values) but matches on every iteration when the lists are compared in a for or foreach statement,