use strict; use warnings; use Data::Dumper; my @data = map { [ [split /,\s*/, $_->[0]], [split /,\s*/, $_->[1]] ] } map { /\[(.*)\]\s*=>\s*\[(.*)\]/ ? [ $1, $2 ] : () } ; my %inverted; for my $d (@data) { undef @{$inverted{$_}}{@{$d->[0]}} for @{$d->[1]}; } my %invertagain; push @{ $invertagain{join ",", sort keys %{$inverted{$_}}} }, $_ for keys %inverted; print Dumper \%invertagain; __DATA__ [a, b, c] => [1, 2, 3] [b, c] => [2, 3, 4, 5] [a, c, d] => [4, 5, 6, 7] [d] => [1, 2, 6]