As a one-liner:

perl -ne '/(\S*)\s+(\S*)/; push @a,$1 if length $1; push @b,$2 if length $2; END{ print "First column output:\n\n@a\n\nSecond column output:\n\n@b\n\n" }'

And more readably:

while (<>) {
    # Added a conditional per merlyn's advice
    /(\S*)\s+(\S*)/ or next;
#   /(\S*)\s+(\S*)/;

    push @a, $1 if length $1;
    push @b, $2 if length $2;
}

print "First column output:\n\n@a\n\n",
      "Second column output:\n\n@b\n\n"

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Seeking Green geeks in Minnesota

In reply to Re: making a single column out of a two-column text file by diotalevi
in thread making a single column out of a two-column text file by allolex

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