The Template Toolkit can do this as well using one of the built-in plugins:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use Template;

my @raw_data = ( '1|seans.gif|Sean Shrum',
                 '2|steves.gif|Steve Shrum',
                 '3|dianas.gif|Diana Shrum',
                 '4|marthas.gif|Martha Shrum' );
my @data = map { [ split '\|', $_ ] } @raw_data;
my $template = Template->new();
$template->process( \*DATA, { data => \@data,
                              column_num => 3 } )
                    || die $template->error();

__DATA__
[%- USE table( data, rows = column_num ) -%]

[% FOREACH col = table.cols -%]
<tr>
   [%- FOREACH item = col -%]
    [%- IF item %]
     <td><img src="[% item.1 %]"><br>
         [% item.0 %] [% item.2 %]</td>
    [%- ELSE %]
      <td>&nbsp;</td>
    [%- END %]
   [%- END %]
</tr>
[% END -%]
[download]

Which produces:

<tr>
     <td><img src="seans.gif"><br>
         1 Sean Shrum</td>
     <td><img src="steves.gif"><br>
         2 Steve Shrum</td>
     <td><img src="dianas.gif"><br>
         3 Diana Shrum</td>
</tr>
<tr>
     <td><img src="marthas.gif"><br>
         4 Martha Shrum</td>
      <td>&nbsp;</td>
      <td>&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
[download]

The table plugin takes a little getting used to, but it's extremely handy.

Chris
M-x auto-bs-mode