Thanks you very much kennethk I think your method of looping through an array is better. I am having problems with understanding how the push method is supposed to work. lets say that i have found 10 occurrences of fever and then 20 occurrences of koorts I have declared an array called hit as suggested. but what I am not sure is how will 10 will be added to the first element and 20 as the second element. I am very new to Perl so am just finding my feet. I just realised that each time that each time for for loop is run it will go to the next element and then the number++ is will started again from zero to add up the occurrences of the next element in the array. i have managed to get the push array function and have performed a few example so i can familiarize myself with it. one problem when i run the print statement it only shows the total amount not the sub divided amount for each element is my test correct

In reply to Re^2: to loop through an array by alexlearn
in thread to loop through an array and store each of the subtotals in the elements of another array by alexlearn

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