Hmmm... I'm not sure I understand you problem fully but I think you need to make sure you only have unique elements(i.e h1) in the @mak array

@mak = qw(h1, h2, h3, h1, h3);
my %mak_table = ();
foreach my $num ( @mak ) {                        
      $mak_table{$num}++;                          
      print "\n\n$mak_table{$num}\n";             # Only so you can se
+e what is happening
}                                                 
my @unique_nums = sort keys %mak_table;

print "@unique_nums\n";
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Then you can use any of the unique values in the @unique_nums array.. Hope I'm not too far off the mark... that fishshop may not be a bad idea...