I've reduced this to a minimal test case to show you a clean way of writing this:

use CGI;
use strict;
my $query = CGI->new;

my %users;

while (<DATA>) {
    chomp;
    my ($user,$path)=( split '\|',$_ )[0,2];
    warn "DB Error: $user already exists!" if exists $users{ $user };
    $users{ $user } = $path;
}

print $query->popup_menu(-name   => 'directory',
                         -values => [sort keys %users],
                         -labels => \%users);
__DATA__
bob|asdf|/usr/data/bob
alice|qwer|/usr/data/alice
[download]

This prints:

<select name="directory">
<option  value="alice">/usr/data/alice</option>
<option  value="bob">/usr/data/bob</option>
</select>
[download]

Cheers,
Ovid

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