Thank you for replying so fast. Yes, doing a hash of arrays did occur to me. Something along the lines - 

chomp;
(my $k, my @v) = /(\S*\s*\S*\s*)(\S*\s*\S*\s*)/;
push @{$h{$k}} , shift @v;

[download]

But dropped the idea because I had to iterate twice:

foreach my $key (sort keys %h) {
    print "$key";
    foreach my $a (@{$h{$key}}) {
        print "$a ";
    }
    print "\n";
}

[download]

But I see how in a bigger data set this should be the way to go. Checking for existence in a larger hash could be counter productive.

In reply to Re^2: Appending values to existing hash key by jaypal
in thread Appending values to existing hash key by jaypal

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