Thanks for all the replies! Yes, can't beat fruity loops, ha, ha! Ron, I think that's what I'm trying to achieve. Essentially all I'm trying to do is repeat the while loop script for as many times as I have fruit_types. As you've probably guessed from my "fruity loops", primary school example, :) I just don't have the scripting knowledge of Perl to execute this. I've been modifying the script with a bash loop, with something along the lines of...

occurrence=( $(wc -l fruit_types) )

for i in `seq 1 $occurrence`
blah, blah, blah.
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I know there must be an easier and less primitive way of doing this like you've suggested but could someone throw an example my way. As said I need some help with the scripting.

#!perl
use strict;
use Excel::Writer::XLSX;

# Create a new Excel workbook and worksheet
my $workbook = Excel::Writer::XLSX->new( 'fruits.xlsx' );
my $worksheet = $workbook->add_worksheet();

# get fruit types
open FRUITS,'fruit_types.txt' or die "$!";
my @fruits = split '\s',<FRUITS>;

# write column for each fruit
for my $col (0..$#fruits){
  my $fruit = $fruits[$col];
  my $filename = $fruit.'.txt';
  open IN, $filename or die "Could not open $filename : $!";
  
  my @col = ($fruit);
  while (<IN>){
    chomp;
    push @col, $_;
  }
  print "Writing column $col @col\n";
  $worksheet->write_col(0,$col,\@col);
}
$workbook->close() or die "Error closing file: $!";
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poj

Ha, ha, yes quite, indeed. Forgive me mien Fuhrer, I am but a mere foot soldier in the ranks of the grammar Nazi's, I still slip from time to time! ;)

On a serious note, thanks for your help.