Depending on what you want to do with it once you have it in the script, you could put the elements into 3 different hashes, one for the left, one for the middle and one for the right. This would allow you to reference all the elements at once or seperately later on. 
use strict;
use warnings;

my $file = '3column.file';
my $i=0;
open (INPUT, "<$file") or die "Could not open $file: $!";
my (%left_hash,%middle_hash,%right_hash);
while    (<INPUT>)
    {
    my ($left, $middle, $right) = split (/\s+/, $_);
    $left_hash{$i}=$left;
    $middle_hash{$i}=$middle;
    $right_hash{$i}=$right;
    $i++;
    }

[download]
-Kevin

In reply to Re: array - separating elements in a 3-column list by K_M_McMahon
in thread array - separating elements in a 3-column list by pugsly62

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