You are looking for the "split" command. You can find that in most document areas for Perl. For your example here you could use : 
 my($type, $date, $itemtype, $address, $email, $username) = split /\|/
+, $line;

[download]
or something of that nature.

Just a hint though for future stuff, generally most monks are around for stuff that may not be evident from basic liturature look ups. This is a pretty common task and you could find the answer pretty quick in the Camel book. Also there is a great book that I refer to all the time, CoriolisOpen Press Black Book Perl.. ISBN 1 57610-465-6. They have a website at www.coriolis.com if you are interested and your local store doesn't carry a copy.

hope that helps

Glenn H.
webadept.net

In reply to Re: Assigning scalar to each field in a flat file database by webadept
in thread Assigning scalar to each field in a flat file database by Anonymous Monk

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