I recently gathered, using a questionnaire, a set of opinions on the importance of various software components. Figuring that some form of Condorcet voting method would be the best way to obtain an overall rank, I opted to use OpenSTV to analyze it. My data is in tabular format, space delimited, and looks more or less like: A B C D E F G # Candidates 5 2 4 3 7 6 1 # First ballot. G is ranked first, and E is ranked 7th 4 2 6 5 1 7 3 # Second ballot etc In this format, the number indicates the rank and the sequence order indicates the candidate. Each "candidate" has a rank (required) from 1 to 7, where a 1 means most important and a 7 means least important. No duplicates are allowed. This format struck me as the most natural way to represent the output, being a direct representation of the ballot format. The OpenSTV/BLT format uses a different method of representing the same info, conceptually as follows: G B D C A F E # Again, G is ranked first and E is ranked 7th E B G A D C F # etc The actual numeric file format uses the (1-based) index of the candidate, rather than the label, and so is more like: 7 2 4 3 1 6 5 # Same ballots as before. 5 2 7 1 4 3 6 # A -> 1, G -> 7 In this format, the number indicates the candidate, and the sequence order indicates the rank. The actual, real, BLT format also includes a leading weight and a following zero to indicate the end of each ballot, which I don't care too much about for this. My question is, what is the most elegant way to convert from the first format to the (numeric) second?