in reply to Trying to get the complete opposite end results

An alternate solution:

(1)-build hash of the data
(2)-delete the keys that are not needed
(3)-print what is "left over"

below I left 10.2.9.3 out of the "exclusion data" to show what would happen.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; my $tmpdata=<<END; Source Destination Packets Bytes 15.254.32.120 10.2.9.2 5 504 209.68.19.130 10.2.9.4 33 15941 17.149.36.162 10.2.9.3 14 3416 17.149.36.15 10.2.9.3 14 3404 67.148.147.65 10.2.9.5 57 39207 8.8.8.8 10.2.9.6 84 8006 Accounting data age is 0w1d Box# END my %destination; #a hash of array # # read in all the data # open my $TMPDATA, '<', \$tmpdata or die "cannot open tmpdata $!"; while (<$TMPDATA>) { my ($ipSource, $ipDestination, $packets, $bytes) = /^\s*([\d.]+)\s+([\d.]+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s*$/; next unless defined $bytes; push @{$destination{$ipDestination}}, [$ipSource,$packets, $bytes]; } close $TMPDATA; # # exclude (delete) some data # while (<DATA>) { next if /^\s*$/; #skip blanks chomp; delete $destination{$_} if exists $destination{$_}; } # # print what is left over # foreach my $dest ( sort keys %destination) { foreach my $source_ref (@{$destination{$dest}}) { printf "%s\t$dest\t%s\t%s\n", @$source_ref; } } =prints 17.149.36.162 10.2.9.3 14 3416 17.149.36.15 10.2.9.3 14 3404 209.68.19.130 10.2.9.4 33 15941 67.148.147.65 10.2.9.5 57 39207 =cut __DATA__ 10.2.9.2 10.2.9.6