Here's a quick snippet that should suggest the type of structure that could work for the task:

my %hash;
while (my $line=<IN>) { # I assume an open IN filehandle
  chomp $line;
  ($username, $realname, $pwd) = split /\t/, $line; # I assume tab del
+imiter
  $hash{$username} = [$realname, $pwd];
}
[download]

Then you can access someuser's realname or password like:

$realname = $hash{'someuser'}->[0];
$pwd = $hash{'someuser'}->[1];
[download]

My recommendation would be to look at the references manpage for the background on how to build and work with simple data structures.

Good luck.

..Guv

Thanks.. that should do the trick

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use Data::Dumper;

my %userinfo;

while ( <DATA> ) {
    chomp;
    my ( $username, $realname, $password ) = split /\|/;
    $userinfo{$username} = { realname => $realname, password => $passw
+ord };
}

print Dumper \%userinfo;

__DATA__
patgas|patrick|foobar
doodle|what|now
cannot|think|of
better|sample|data
[download]

"We're experiencing some Godzilla-related turbulence..."

$hash{'username1'}=("realname1", "password1");
[download]

--
tune