Each column is separated by one or more white space. so my code should
+ look something like this,
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Why do you think it should look like that?

$ENV{HOME}='C:\Documents and Settings\kompeS\Desktop\PERL SCRIPTS';
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Why are you using  $ENV{HOME} to store the directory name? Why not just use a normal lexical variable?

open (FILE,"$file");
close(FILE);
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Why are you opening and then closing the file? You should always verify that the file opened correctly.

tie (@data,'Tie::File',$file, mode=>O_RDWR) or die "Can't tie to $file
+:$^E\n";
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The default mode is already O_RDWR? You should store the object returned from tie so that you can use it later for defer() and flush().

    @list=split(/ /,@data);
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split's second argument is a scalar so perl will convert @data to a scalar which will be the number of elements in @data. Since there is no whitespace in a number that has the same effect as doing  @list = scalar @data;.

You are iterating over the array @data which means that the current line is in the  $_ variable.

The regular expression  / / will split on a single space character, if you want to split on multiple space characters use  / +/ or just use the default  @list = split; which will split on multiple whitespace characters.

Try relpacing:

    @list=split(/ /,@data);
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with:

    @list = split /\s+/;
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Instead of chained ifs, you can use hash keys to index into an array.

my %keys = qw( monster 0 hp 1 size 2 AC 3);
my    @data = ( [qw(troll 30 10 2)],
                [qw(dwarf 20 2 9 )],
                [qw(pixie 2 1 30 )]);

foreach my $line (@data) {
   print  "name @$line[$keys{'monster'}] \n";
   print "\thas @$line[$keys{'hp'}] hit points\n";
}
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prints something like this:

name troll
        has 30 hit points
name dwarf
        has 20 hit points
name pixie
        has 2 hit points
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Of course, by then, you're just one step away from creating objects. Which is probably a better idea in the long run.