I have a tabbed file; the first field is the primary key of the table ($descid), the second is different ID ($conid), and the third is a string with (possibly) non-ascii characters.

I am trying to capture my matches of non-ascii characters from the string field into a hash to count each of those matches. The list of all character matches from a single run through the inner loop (a single row of the table) is to be the value of another hash keyed on $descid. Finally, $conid is to be the key to a hash whose value is the list of $descid in the table as a whole.

In other words, I want an inner hash counting character matches, a list of hashes, a hash of lists keyed on $descid, and a hash of hashes keyed on $conid

I can capture the characters in the code shown. How do I capture the list of characters matched from a single row of the table to put them into an annonymous array to become the value of the outer hash? I have looked through the camel, the lol tutorial, and other places, but I don't see the answer. I tried making the inner loop: 

while(@rowmatches = /[^\x{1}-\x{7f}]/go){
...

[download]
thinking that capturing the matches in list context would do it, but it didn't. 
my %chars;

# my $descid;
# my $conid;

while (<>) {
   while (/[^\x{1}-\x{7f}]/go){ 
    ++$chars{$&};
   }
}
foreach my $char (keys %chars){
    print "$char found $chars{$char} times\n";
}

print "found ". keys(%chars) . " distinct non-ascii chars\n";

[download]

In reply to capturing the numerous hits from a global match into nested data by jjohhn

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