G'day perlynewby,

"... I do not know how to add multiple values to key in a hash."

See "perldsc - Perl Data Structures Cookbook". There are links at the end to more detailed information.

"Clearly, I do not understand how to manipulate the array of elements to create a table equally align."

There are a variety of options. In the example code below, I've used formats — see sprintf for a full description of formatting options.

Update (disambiguation): "formats" (used in the previous paragraph) does not refer to "perlform - Perl formats".

"open (DATA,'<',$infile) ..."

Use lexical filehandles instead of package variables — see open. In this case, DATA is a poor choice; not only because it is a package variable but also because it's special — see "perldata: Special Literals".

"... or die "could not open the $infile: $!";"

Consider using the autodie pragma. It saves you having to type the "or die ..." code and is far less error-prone.

Here's an example showing the use of formatting: 

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my $fmt = "%-11s % 12.6f % 12.6f %s\n% 24.6f % 12.6f %s\n";

while (<DATA>) {
    my @cols = split;
    $_ = <DATA>;
    push @cols, split;
    printf $fmt, @cols;
}

__DATA__
MM_STD_gate -61.771653             -45.472441      mils
  -1569.000000           -1155.000000       microns
RFN_a                    -91.102362              68.307087      mils
                    -2314.000000            1735.000000       microns
RFN_b                    -62.165354              68.307087      mils
-1579.000000            1735.000000      microns
RFN_c                    -51.417322              68.307087      mils
                              -1306.000000            1735.000000     
+  microns

[download]

Here's the output:

MM_STD_gate   -61.771653   -45.472441 mils
            -1569.000000 -1155.000000 microns
RFN_a         -91.102362    68.307087 mils
            -2314.000000  1735.000000 microns
RFN_b         -62.165354    68.307087 mils
            -1579.000000  1735.000000 microns
RFN_c         -51.417322    68.307087 mils
            -1306.000000  1735.000000 microns

[download]

— Ken

In reply to Re: Help with Creating a Table from array ref I parsed in by kcott
in thread Help with Creating a Table from array ref I parsed in by perlynewby

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