This sort of thing happens to me quite often, but my
choice would be to change your split() to be more flexible (i.e.
split on tabs or spaces in this case) if possible,
rather than edit your data, unless of course you won't ever
need to run this on unknown data in the future. I figure
if there is one line of bad data, there's bound to be more
sometime (especially since my data have come from manual
entry or rather crusty/rusty machinery). Just a thought.