You could instead use an array of arrays.

use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;

my $i = 0;
my $line = <DATA>;
chomp($line);
my $colums = {  # hash ref to hold colum numbers
                map { $_ => $i++ }      # map each column to a hash an
+d give it the index
                    split(/\|/,$line)   # split it on the pipe and sen
+d it to map
             };

print Dumper($colums);
my $rows;
foreach my $line (<DATA>)
{
  chomp $line;
  push @$rows, [split(/\|/, $line)];
}

print "Record 1: first = " . $rows->[0][$colums->{first}];

__DATA__
title|first|last|room|phone|email
Mrs|Linda|Caralo|201|148|she@borg.org
Miss|Jean|Androno|317|167|j@alo.com
Mr|Steve|Paterman|101|100|steve@net.net
[download]

That way you don't reproduce colum information. Prob a better way to do this but here was my whack at it.

___________
Eric Hodges