in reply to I sense there is a simpler way...

Helge,

Here is a begining, this only parses the input data once. It could be more efficient, possibly the regexp could be turned into a split on /,\s*|\(/ and then a test made on the first part of the split, not sure what sort of data you are trying not to match but possibly something like this

my ($test, $id, $key)=split /,\s*|\(/, $_, 4; next unless $test=/PROBABLECAUSE\w*/;
You may want to fix keys starting with a cap so they match duplicates without. I put the processing in the loop reading STDIN, this was so I could test it easily by bashing a few lines in by hand. May also be a little more efficient as the script starts working as soon as it has its first line rather than waiting till all is in.
#!/use/your/bin/perl -w use strict; my($line_count, @lines, %dup, @capkeys)=0; while (<STDIN>) { if (m/PROBABLECAUSE\w*\((\d+),\s*\w*,\s+(\w*)/) { my ($id, $key)= ($1, $2); # check if any key has init caps (not allowed) if ($key =~ m/^[A-Z]\w*/) { push @capkeys, "$line_count: $id - $key\n"; # you may want to fix up caps here before you store # the key so Keysomething matches keysomething } if (exists $dup{$key}) { print "Duplicates found\n"; print "$dup{$key}->[0]: $dup{$key}->[1]\n"; print "$line_count: $_\n"; } else { $dup{$key}=[$line_count, $_]; # store line } $line_count++; } } print "keys with initial caps\n" if @capkeys; foreach (@capkeys) {print}

update
Got my split sugestion a little wrong, field misscount should be
my ($test, $id, undef, $key)=split /,\s*|\(/, $_, 5; next unless $test=/PROBABLECAUSE\w*/;
In the initial caps test is the \w* really required or would if ($key =~ m/^[A-Z]/ be OK ? What if the entire key is in upper case or will that never happen ?
cleaner code, now taking liberties !
Lets just fix those upper cased keys and not trouble the poor users....
#!/your/perl -w use strict; my($line_count, %dup)=0; while (<STDIN>) { my ($test, $id, undef, $key)=split /,\s*|\(/, $_, 5; next unless $test=/PROBABLECAUSE\w*/; # If i may be so bold... $key = lc $key; if (exists $dup{$key}) { print "Duplicates found\n"; print "$dup{$key}->[0]: $dup{$key}->[1]"; print "$line_count: $_"; } else { $dup{$key}=[$line_count, $_]; # store No and line } $line_count++; }