use strict; use warnings; use 5.010; open my $inFH, q{<}, \ <<'EOD' or die qq{open: < HEREDOC: $!\n}; NAME LAST_NAME PHONE EMAIL John Smith 1234 lala@lala.com Peter Jones 6789 ttt@yahoo.com George Lukas 9086 lll@hotmail.com EOD my( @N, @LN, @P, @E ); push @{ $_->[ 0 ] == 1 ? \ @N : $_->[ 0 ] == 2 ? \ @LN : $_->[ 0 ] == 3 ? \ @P : \ @E }, $_->[ 1 ] for map { chomp; my $col = 0; map { [ ++ $col, $_ ] } split m{\t}; } <$inFH>; close $inFH or die qq{close: < HEREDOC: $!\n}; say for @N, q{}, @LN, q{}, @P, q{}, @E;