in reply to Remove particular columns of a matrix

Transpose is your friend...

#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; # https://perlmonks.org/?node_id=11146766 use warnings; use List::AllUtils qw( zip_by ); my @matrix = ( [qw(t1 t1 t2 t2 t2)], # <- transcripts [qw(a1 a2 a1 a1 a2)], # <- alleles [qw(intron intron UTR_CG UTR UTR)], # <- locations ); use Data::Dump 'dd'; dd 'original matrix', \@matrix; my @t = zip_by { [ @_ ] } @matrix; use Data::Dump 'dd'; dd '@t', \@t; my %cg = map { $_->[0] . "\n" . $_->[1] => 1 } grep { $_->[2] eq 'UTR_ +CG' } @t; use Data::Dump 'dd'; dd '%cg', \%cg; @t = grep { $_->[2] ne 'UTR' or not $cg{ $_->[0] . "\n" . $_->[1] } } +@t; use Data::Dump 'dd'; dd 'modified @t', \@t; my @finalmatrix = zip_by { [ @_ ] } @t; use Data::Dump 'dd'; dd 'final matrix', \@finalmatrix;

Outputs:

( "original matrix", [ ["t1", "t1", "t2", "t2", "t2"], ["a1", "a2", "a1", "a1", "a2"], ["intron", "intron", "UTR_CG", "UTR", "UTR"], ], ) ( "\@t", [ ["t1", "a1", "intron"], ["t1", "a2", "intron"], ["t2", "a1", "UTR_CG"], ["t2", "a1", "UTR"], ["t2", "a2", "UTR"], ], ) ("%cg", { "t2\na1" => 1 }) ( "modified \@t", [ ["t1", "a1", "intron"], ["t1", "a2", "intron"], ["t2", "a1", "UTR_CG"], ["t2", "a2", "UTR"], ], ) ( "final matrix", [ ["t1", "t1", "t2", "t2"], ["a1", "a2", "a1", "a2"], ["intron", "intron", "UTR_CG", "UTR"], ], )