You're looking for something like this:

# without using hashes, as you requested
sub group_cards_nohash {
  # convert initial string param into a sorted list of cards
  my @cards = sort { $a <=> $b }
              split / /, shift;

  my @tally;
  my $cnt = 1;

  # generate running tally of cards - we're going to remove
  # cards one at a time from the list, until it's empty
  while (@cards) {

    # remove a card
    my ($card, $tally) = (shift @cards, 1);

    # remove successive cards until there are none left, or
    # a card of a different value is encountered
    while (defined $cards[0] and $cards[0] == $card) {
      shift @cards;
      $tally++;   # increment tally for every identical card
    }

    # add this tally to the results
    push @tally, $tally;
  }

  # return the tally sorted in reverse
  sort { $b <=> $a } @tally;
}

# though it's much more straightforward with the hash-based approach b
+elow
sub group_cards_hash {
  # convert initial string param into a sorted list of cards
  # notice that we don't need to sort this one
  my @cards = split / /, pop;
  my %tally;

  # tally the cards
  $tally{$_}++ foreach @cards;

  # return the tally sorted in reverse
  sort { $b <=> $a } values %tally;
}

print join ',', group_cards_hash('9 9 5 5 1');
print "\n";
print join ',', group_cards_nohash('9 9 5 5 1');
[download]

   MeowChow                                   
               s aamecha.s a..a\u$&owag.print

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