Here's a generic technique to achieve what you want based on your supplied data. 

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my @labels;
my %col_data;

while (<DATA>) {
    chomp;
    my @cells = split /\t/;

    if ($. == 1) {
        @labels = @cells;
    }
    else {
        push @{$col_data{$labels[$_]}} => $cells[$_] for (0 .. $#label
+s);
    }
}

print join(qq{\n} => $_, @{$col_data{$_}}), qq{\n\n} for @labels;

__DATA__
NAME    LAST_NAME   PHONE   EMAIL
John    Smith   1234    lala@lala.com
Peter   Jones   6789    ttt@yahoo.com
George  Lukas   9086    lll@hotmail.com

[download]

Here's the output:

$ pm_read_vert.pl
NAME
John
Peter
George

LAST_NAME
Smith
Jones
Lukas

PHONE
1234
6789
9086

EMAIL
lala@lala.com
ttt@yahoo.com
lll@hotmail.com

[download]

-- Ken

In reply to Re: Smart way to read a file vertically? by kcott
in thread Smart way to read a file vertically? by Anonymous Monk

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