Hmm, how about something like this instead?

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

my @names;
my @items;

sub processRec {
        my $fh = shift; #ref to filehandle
        while(<$fh>) {
                chomp;
                s/\cM//;
                next if /^$/;
                next if /^\d-RECORD$/;
                push ( @names, /ITEMNAME-(.*)/);
                push ( @items, /ITEM \d-(.*)/);
        }
}

open( FH, "<data");
processRec(*FH);
close(FH);
for my $name ( @names ) { print "name = [$name]\n"; }
for my $item ( @items ) { print "item = [$item]\n"; }
[download]

No sense in using two while loops.

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Matthew Musgrove
Who says that programmers can't work in the Marketing Department?
Or is that who says that Marketing people can't program?