Hi again,
Please excuse my old eyes: I got excited by all the symmetry I thought I saw in the table, and missed the fact that the first row is special. So one-liner becomes two-liner... ah well... To get the following table output
<table> <tr><th>item_01</th><th>item_02</th><th>item_03</th></tr> <tr><td>item_11</td><td>item_12</td><td>item_13</td></tr> <tr><td>item_21</td><td>item_22</td><td>item_23</td></tr> </table>
use the previous prescription, but with the command:
#!/usr/bin/perl chomp($first=<>);print "<table>\n\t<tr><th>",join("</th><th>",(split(/ \t/,$first))),"</th></tr>\n\t<tr><td>"; print join("</td></tr>\n\t<tr><td>",map {chomp;join("</td><td>",(split (/\t/,$_)))} <>),"</td></tr>\n</table>\n";
Cheers, Paul