Hello oldcity,

Here’s a guess at what you’re looking for:

use strict;
use warnings;

OPEN_200R();

sub OPEN_200R
{
    my @lines = <DATA>;
    my $gcnt  = 0;
    my @catg;
    my $catlgs5 = '';
    my $catlgs6 = '';

    for (@lines)
    {
        my ($catg) = split ' ';
        ++$gcnt;
        chomp $catg;
        $catg[$gcnt] = $catg;

        if    ($gcnt <= 5)
        {
            $catlgs5 .= '|' . $catg[$gcnt];
        }
        elsif ($gcnt >= 6)
        {
            $catlgs6 .= '|' . $catg[$gcnt];
        }
    }

    print "5: $catlgs5\n";
    print "6: $catlgs6\n";
}

__DATA__
1-AT&T   
2-FP&L   
3-WATER  
4-GAS    
5-PLAN-D 
5-PLAN-D 6-AARP   
5-PLAN-D 7-DIAZ   
5-PLAN-D 8-DRUGS  
5-PLAN-D 9-HOUSE  
5-PLAN-D10-CAR    
5-PLAN-D11-MISC
[download]

Output:

12:55 >perl 1942_SoPW.pl
5: |1-AT&T|2-FP&L|3-WATER|4-GAS|5-PLAN-D
6: |5-PLAN-D|5-PLAN-D|5-PLAN-D|5-PLAN-D|5-PLAN-D10-CAR|5-PLAN-D11-MISC

12:55 >
[download]

Notes:

• Always use strict; and declare variables with my.
• join has no effect on a single scalar. I think you’re looking to concatenate the existing contents of $catlgs5 with the the current value of $catg[$gcnt]. You could do this: $catlgs5 = join '|', $catlgs5, $catg[$gcnt];, but using the concatenation operator . is simpler.
• I’ve used | as the separator (rather than the empty string) only in order to make the output easier to read.

Hope that helps,