in reply to Building a dynamic array or some other method?

Maybe you want something like:

use strict; use warnings; use Text::CSV; use Data::Dumper; my $csvFile = <<CSV; A,B,C,D,E,F,G a1,b,c,"D,1",E1,f,g a1,b,c,"D,2",E1,f,g a1,b,c,"D,1",E2,f,g a2,b,c,"D,1",E3,f,g a2,b,c,"D,2",E3,f,g CSV open my $fIn, '<', \$csvFile; my $csv = Text::CSV->new(); $csv->column_names($csv->getline($fIn)); my $arrayref = $csv->getline_all($fIn); my %dataHash; $dataHash{join "\t", @{$_}[0, 1, 2, 5, 6]}{$_->[3]}{$_->[4]} = 1 for @ +$arrayref; for my $key (sort keys %dataHash) { my @fields = split "\t", $key; my @dKeys = sort keys %{$dataHash{$key}}; my %eKeys; $eKeys{$_} = 1 for map {keys %{$dataHash{$key}{$_}}} @dKeys; my $dField = join '; ', @dKeys; my $eField = join '; ', sort keys %eKeys; splice @fields, 3, 0, ($dField, $eField); $csv->say(*STDOUT, \@fields); }

Prints:

a1,b,c,"D,1; D,2","E1; E2",f,g a2,b,c,"D,1; D,2",E3,f,g

Update: small bug to deal with repeated E column values

Optimising for fewest key strokes only makes sense transmitting to Pluto or beyond