#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; use Graph; my $g = Graph::Undirected->new; while () { chomp; my ($x, $y) = split /;/; $y = $x if $y eq ''; # will pass $y == 0 if that's the case $g->add_edge($x, $y); } my %pred; for my $aref ($g->connected_components) { my @items = sort {$a <=> $b} @$aref; my $first = $items[0]; for my $element (@items) { $pred{$element} = $first; } } print "$_ => $pred{$_}\n" for sort {$a <=> $b} keys %pred; __DATA__ 567;456 456;345 345;234 234;123 339;228 228;117 131; 435;324 324;213 372;