You can also try to use the Data::CTable module. Here's a one way you can do to get the final data structure you need. You should read more module documentation for the Data::CTable module if you need more functions to access/modify the data.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use Data::Dumper;
use Data::CTable;

my $table = Data::CTable->new("data.txt");
$table->clean_ws();  # a bit of a clean up
my $fields = $table->fieldlist_all();

my %final_hash;
foreach my $col  ( @$fields ) {
      $final_hash{$col} =  $table->{$col}  ;  ## Get a column you know
+ exists
}

print Dumper \%final_hash;
[download]

gives the output...

$VAR1 = {
          '1' => [
                   'a',
                   'b',
                   'c'
                 ],
          '3' => [
                   'x',
                   'y',
                   'z'
                 ],
          '2' => [
                   'p',
                   'q',
                   'r'
                 ]
        };
[download]

perliff