Makeshifts last the longest.

You don't need the map function, rchou2. You took care of everything by using the for() loop. However, you did not split the data into fields.

Here's one way to do what you are asking, that borrows most of the syntax preferences from your example:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

rename 'tempfile.txt', 'tempfile.txt~'; # save a backup

open TEMPFILE, "<tempfile.txt~" or die $!;

my @data;
my @newcolumn = qw(d 
                   e
                   f);
my $incr = 0;
for my $line (<TEMPFILE>) {
        
        my @elements = split(/\s+/g, $line); # split the line on all w
+hitespace
        push @elements, $newcolumn[$incr++]; # add a new column
        push @data, \@elements;              # need to store as ref
}
close TEMPFILE;

@data = sort { $$a[2] cmp $$b[2]  ||  $$b[1] <=> $$a[1] } @data # or d
+ie "can't sort";

$,    = " " ;         # separate output fields by a space

open OUTFILE, ">tempfile.txt" or die $!;

foreach my $item (@data){
    print OUTFILE "@$item\n";
}
close OUTFILE;
__END__
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