#some values to use
my @items = qw(oranges apples pears lemons kumquats);
#sort 'em
@items = sort @items;

# we want to output, e.g.
# A | D
# B | E
# C |
# so we need the offset for D,
#and a kludge to avoid warning on non-existent array elem. when printing odd num of items
my $item_count = @items;
my $offset  = int(($item_count+1)/2);
push @items, '';

map{
  print "$items[$_] | $items[$_ + $offset]\n";
}0..($offset-1);