Why not think about using a hash of arrays, rather than an array of arrays? That way you could get at each record quickly and easily.

You could populate it something like this:

my %names;
while (<>) {
        chomp;
        my @line = split /\|/;
        next unless defined $line[2];
        $names{$line[0]} = [@line[1,2]];
}
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and you would get the values for a particular record like this:

print "values for bill: $names{'bill'}->[0] , $names{'bill'}->[1]";
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and change them like this:

$names{'bill'}->[0] = 3;
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(NB: Of course, this solution is no good if you have any duplicate names)

hth, andy.