You are looking for the "split" command. You can find that in most document areas for Perl. For your example here you could use :

 my($type, $date, $itemtype, $address, $email, $username) = split /\|/
+, $line;
[download]

or something of that nature.

Just a hint though for future stuff, generally most monks are around for stuff that may not be evident from basic liturature look ups. This is a pretty common task and you could find the answer pretty quick in the Camel book. Also there is a great book that I refer to all the time, CoriolisOpen Press Black Book Perl.. ISBN 1 57610-465-6. They have a website at www.coriolis.com if you are interested and your local store doesn't carry a copy.

hope that helps

Glenn H.
webadept.net