"Sorry if that comes out poorly here.

It does. You need to read Markup in the Monastery and Perl Monks Approved HTML tags -- specifically, about the use of <c>...</c> which is also BOLDFACED in the cautionary note below the text input box where you create a node.. Then you can make your data render reasonably (and make it downloadable for those with time to help on this).

Hint only for now: read perldoc -f split (aka: split) re limits.:

Apples    0.5    -10    Emma:17:15:14:18    Peter:2:7:4:1
Pears    0.7    -12    Alex:101:144:110:111
Oranges    0.8    -14    Shan:12:14:9:57    Heena:65:17:15:24     Rach
+el:1:5:18:54

[download]
and the desired outcome will look like this: 
Apples    0.5    -10    Emma:17:15:14:18
Apples    0.5    -10    Peter:2:7:4:1
Pears    0.7    -12    Alex:101:144:110:111
Oranges    0.8    -14    Shan:12:14:9:57
Oranges    0.8    -14    Heena:65:17:15:24
Oranges    0.8    -14    Rachel:1:5:18:54

[download]

In reply to Re: Parsing a table with variable columns on each line by ww
in thread Parsing a table with variable columns on each line by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
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