"Since you claim to be a "perl beginner" - kcott's (++) code may be a little esoteric."

To NetWallah: Thanks for the ++; esotericism was not the intention.

To To_Bz: If there was something in my original code you didn't understand, please feel free to ask; however, first see the clarification below.

"Here is somewhat simpler and more traditional code (with no module dependencies):"

The module (Inline::Files) was not intended for To_Bz's code; it was purely for my test.

I was aiming to use (what appeared to be) the smaller file (values.txt) to create the hash; then selectively printing from (what appeared to be) the larger file (table.txt).

As a clarification, here's the entire script I envisaged for To_Bz (correcting the open syntax errors and applying my lexical filehandle recommendation):

#!/usr/bin/env perl -l

use strict;
use warnings;
use autodie;

open my $table, '<', 'table.txt';
open my $values, '<', 'values.txt';

my %vals = map { $_ => 1 } <$values>;
print $_->[0] for grep { $vals{$_->[1]} } map { [ split / / ] } <$tabl
+e>;
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[Note: autodie used in lieu of hand-crafting die messages for both open statements.]