title: Perl, how to merge data with duplicate identifier and overlapping values into a hash
body: <p>I was wondering if you could help me with a coding problem which I can't get my head around. The tab-delimited data I have looks like something like the following:</p>
  
  <pre><code>00001  AU:137  AU:150  AU:180
  00001  AU:137  AU:170
  00002  AU:180
  00003  AU:147  AU:155
  00003  AU:155
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The output I want is:</p>
  
  <pre><code>00001  AU:137  AU:150  AU:180  AU:170
  00002  AU:180
  00003  AU:147  AU:155
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>So the first column (identifier) will merge the values, removing duplicates, so that it becomes a hash. I'm not sure how to work with my current data because it can't be a hash having duplicate keys. I'm also not sure how to push the data into an array if the identifier is the same.</p>
  
  <p>I apologize for not having a code. I did try a few, actually, quite a lot, but they don't look right even to a newbie like myself.</p>
  
  <p>Any help, suggestions would be greatly appreciated and thank you so much for your time and answer. I greatly appreciate it.</p>