Thank you for your kind words as well as your advice. I wouldn't even be able to write BAD code, if it were not for you folks! Rather than post 800 lines of code that make up exfields.pl, I will post a synopsis below. Possibly, that will give you and others insight into my problem.

"Extracts records (selectively if requested) from a NPA 
[my group's typical file format]or MAGMA [db schema; 
irrelevant here] table dumps, producing either the 
entire record or (optionally) specified fields in the 
given order.  Parameters can be in any order.

Output is to STDOUT, and can be piped into this program 
(for further selections), or into updated versions of 
exfields.pl or showtable.pl.

The -s option is used to select records according to 
whether a regexp match exists within a -f specified 
field or within the entire record.

The -e option is used, optionally, to specify the 
fieldlist and output field order.

One major use of this program is to create a 
reduced table, whose output contains only selected 
rows and columns.  Another is to transform table format 
or order."
[download]

Now, here's an example of the gunzipped file headers:

#DFD ' '

#H SrcRtr ifIndex ifPRule ifDescr ifName ifType ifSpeed 
ifPhysAddress ifWscModPort ifWscPortName ifAlias ifWscPortVlan 
ifVlanState ifVlanName TPNativeVlan TPDynStatus TPEncapOpType 
ifCP ifStackLL ifStackUL cdpFlg cdpCacheCnt cdpCacheInfo 
ipN2MediaCnt ipN2MediaInfo atmMaxVpcs atmCfgVpcs atmMaxVccs 
atmCfgVccs atmInfo frActCnt frInACnt frInfo IpAddress IpMask 
IpSubNet ospfFlags ospfAreaInfo NumIpAddresses NumIpAddrUp 
CfgIpAddrUp CfgIpAddrStats NumLoopbacksUp CfgRtrPollUp 
CfgRtrLPollUp CfgStats CfgPoll CfgErrFlg CfgWarnFlg CfgIfMapType 
CfgIfSysID CfgPoP MonName CfgIfDescr CfgIfSpeed CfgIfIndex 
SPopRegion SPopType SPopUse SPopAllow SRtrRole DstExtent DPop 
DPopRegion DPopType DPopUse DPopAllow DPopCloud DstDev DstDevRole
MediaDstInfo CfgIfType CfgIfServRole CfgIfPurpose CfgIfVpiA 
CfgIfDlciA CfgIfVpiZ CfgIfDlciZ CfgIfRemL2Dev CfgIfRemL2Port 
CfgIfVLAN FlowType RcIfFlags RcASN RcOspfs BgpLocalAS BgpExtnlAS 
RcBgpCfd RcBgpCfdPeers BgpRemASInfo OspfIfInfo RcPrtChan 
RcPrtChanList RcIfSpeed RcVpiVci RcAtmAalEP RcAtmPkbps RcAtmAkbps 
RcAtmBurst RcAtmPvcMapInfo RcFrDlci RcEncap IpOspfCost 
IpOspfPriority CldGroup CldName CldStatus CldRatio CldThresh 
CfgCid CirActive CirCIR CirSpeed CirOrdered CirOnLine CirOffLine 
ModBy ModOn RcText

#F %16s %3d %5s %16s %s %3d %11.0f %17s %5s %11s %s %s %s %s %s %s 
%s %s %s %s %s %2d %s %2d %s %2s %2s %2s %2s %s %2s %2s %s %15s 
%15s %15s %3s %s %2d %1d %1d %1d %1d %1d %1d %1s %1s %5s %5s %3s 
%6s %-10s %-36s %16s %11.0f %3s %4s %2s %2s %7s %2s %-3s %-10s %4s 
%2s %2s %7s %20s %20s %2s %s %4s %4s %4s %4s %4s %4s %4s %15s %5s 
%5s %4s %4s %5s %5s %5s %5s %2s %s %s %s %s %s %11s %7s %12s %6s 
%6s %6s %s %5s %5s %5s %5s %20s %20s %10s %4s %4s %20s %5s %11s 
%11s %8s %8s %8s %10s %18s %s
[download]

The output of exfields looks EXACTLY as shown in my original post, depending on which fields I want to look at, of course. Basically, what I envision for the database is for it to contain my selected headers from file1 and file2 as column names; each column containing the corresponding data. Column 1 in the db would contain the primary key, which in my case, is a router name. Essentially, that is what the 2 files will have in common; different sets of data related to each router. What I need to do is grab a subset of router data from file1, a subset of router data from file2, and merge both subsets into file3, which will be <STDOUT>. Actually, here's a sample output of exfields:

./exfields.pl -e MonName,ifSpeed,DstDev pptop.20000921.gz 

nyc1-br2/nyc4-br2:1.t3            45045000             nyc4-br2
nyc1-br2/nyc4-br2:2.t3            45045000             nyc4-br2
nyc1-br2/nyc4-br2:3.t3            45045000             nyc4-br2
nyc1-cr1/nyc4-br1.t3              44210000             nyc4-br1
nyc1-br1/nyc2-cr1.t3              45045000             nyc2-cr1
nyc4-br2/cleveland1-br1.2.t3      45045000       cleveland1-br1
nyc4-br2/cleveland1-br2.t3        44210000       cleveland1-br2
nyc4-br2/nyc1-br2:1.t3            45045000             nyc1-br2
nyc4-br2/nyc1-br2:2.t3            45045000             nyc1-br2
nyc4-br2/nyc1-br2:3.t3            45045000             nyc1-br2
nyc4-nbr2/nycmny1-br1.oc12        622000000          nycmny1-br1
[download]

Again, it is the field "MonName" that both file1 and file2 will have in common.I hope that some of this makes my problem a bit clearer to those willing to help out.