If your code is very representative, it seems you can do away with your hash and arrays, and do something like this where you first assign $j:

   ($j=$i)    =~ s/G(.+)/Galpha-$1/;
   my @values = ($j =~ /(Galpha-[it])/  
                    ? map{$1.$_}1..3 
                    : ($j)
                 );
[download]

Also, read up on modifiers in perlre. You have this:

   if ($_=~/^.*\t.*\t(.*)\t.*\t.*/mgi)
[download]

All the modifiers are unnecessary:

• m, because you are matching against a single line;
• g, because you match the (one) beginning of the line;
• i, because you are matching .*, i.e., in any case

 

Update: Clearly, I don't have a clue what your data looks like, but I'm thinking something like this:

use strict;
use warnings;

while (<DATA>){
   chomp;
   next unless  my $i = (split/\t/,$_)[2];

   my $f =  $_;
      $i =~ s/ //g;

  (my $j = $i)  =~ s/G(.+)/Galpha-$1/;

   my @values = ($j =~ /(Galpha-[it])/ 
                    ? map{$1.$_}1..3 
                    : ($j)
                );

   for my $val (@values) {
      my $k =  $f;
      $k    =~ s/$i/$val/g;
      print "$k\n";
   }
}
__DATA__
biologist    xargon    Gi    question
perl    monks    G11    answer?
# prints
biologist       xargon  Galpha-i1       question
biologist       xargon  Galpha-i2       question
biologist       xargon  Galpha-i3       question
perl    monks   Galpha-11       answer?
[download]

---

---

Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!

Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.

Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.

Please read these before you post! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:

a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr

You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)

	For:		Use:
	&		&
	<		&lt;
	>		&gt;
	[		&#91;
	]		&#93;

Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?

See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.