my @one = split /,/, '1,2,3,4,5,6'; my @two = split /,/, '2,9,8,4,7,6'; my @result; for my $i ( 0 .. $#one ) { push @result, $one[$i] - $two[$i]; } my $result = join ',', @result; print $result, "\n"; __END__ -1,-7,-5,0,-2,0 #### use List::MoreUtils qw(pairwise); my @one = split /,/, '1,2,3,4,5,6'; my @two = split /,/, '2,9,8,4,7,6'; our ($a, $b); # keep warnings happy my $result = join ',', pairwise { $a - $b } @one, @two;