I am reading in a file of data, each line has 50 bits of tab-delimited data. I normally use split but for some reason, some items have lots of newline characters seperating the data and some don't. I am doing this within a while loop but it is considering every line as a separate record, not every item.

while (<ARRAY_DATA>)    {
    $line = $_;
    chomp ($line);
    @array = ();
    @array = split (/\s+/, $line);


   # other stuff here

}
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So are you saying that inside that line of 50 items (I'm assuming you're using the term "bits" to mean "things" not 0 or 1) there are newline characters? If so, what is the line termination character - how do you know when you need to start on the next "line".
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"But what of all those sweet words you spoke in private?"
"Oh that's just what we call pillow talk, baby, that's all."

sadly, there is no "line" termination character, i only know when to start the next one after 50 tab-delimited 'things' have been found

If your goal is to read 50 items into an array on each pass of the loop:

while (!eof DATA) {
    local $/="\t";
    chomp(my @set = map {(eof) ? () : scalar(<DATA>)} 1..50);
    print "Set: ", join(',', @set), "\n";
}
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Use whatever filehandle is appropriate.
Update: changed second eof to use "last file read" default form.

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