ah, thanks for notifying me about the paragraph tags, i somehow missed them reading about them

print "File Location?";
my $data_file = <>;
open(RAWDATA, $data_file);
my @list;
while (<RAWDATA>) {
  chomp;
  my (%hash, @rest);
  ($hash{first}, $hash{date}, @rest) = split(",", $_);
  for my $r (@rest) {
    my ($k, $v) = split(' ', $r, 2);
    $hash{$k} = $v;
  }
  push(@list, \%hash);
};
my %seen;
for (@list) { for (keys %$_) { $seen{$_}++ } };
delete $seen{first};
delete $seen{date};
my @allkeys = ('first', 'date', sort keys %seen);
my @keys = (sort keys %seen);
open(SEMIDATA, ">temp.slice");
for my $h (@list) {
print(SEMIDATA join(',', $h->{first}, $h->{date}, map( $_.' '.$h->{$_}
+, @keys ) ), "\n") or warn "print failed: $!";
}
close(RAWDATA);
close(SEMIDATA);
open(EDITDATA, "temp.slice");
my @array_of_data = <EDITDATA>;
close ("temp.slice");
foreach my $line (@array_of_data)
{
#all replacements go here
$line =~ s!X!!g;
$line =~ s!ART ,!ART / ,!g;
$line =~ s!ECG ,!ECG /,!g;
$line =~ s!NBP ,!NBP /  ,!g;
$line =~ s!PA ,!PA / ,!g;
$line =~ s!RESP ,!RESP /,!g;
$line =~ s!SAO2 ,!SAO2 /,!g;
$line =~ s!ST ,!ST //,!g;
$line =~ s!TEMP \n!TEMP /\n!g;
}

# Open the file for writing.
open REGDATA, ">temp2.slice";
foreach my $line (@array_of_data)
   {
   # Print each line in turn to the new filehandle DATAOUT
   print REGDATA "$line";
   }
close REGDATA;
}
[download]

this is relevant part of the program i have so far, which sorts each data label alphabetically. As I was unsure of how to count how many distinct numbers followed a label, i tried to fill in non existant data with substitutions, which was merely a temporary fix. I havent even begun attempting to get the data organized into nice excel-esque columns, as that would first require standardizing its appearance.

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