The simplest way to do this (atleast for me) is with a hash. Now, the solution is a bit simplistic and it if you need to treat the data in any way before you print it it might not suffice, but it does give you the requested result.
I know I'm gonna be whacked on the head for not finding a better way of splitting the data.
#!/usr/bin/perl
my %hash;
while (<DATA>) {
chomp;
my ($name, $column2, $column3, $column4, $column5, $type) = sp
+lit/\s+/;
$hash{$type} = $hash{$type} . "$name $column2 $column3 $column
+4 $column5\n";
}
foreach $key (sort keys %hash) {
print "$key\n$hash{$key}\n";
}
__DATA__
name1 1 2 3 4 typex
name2 3 4 5 6 typey
name3 2 3 3 1 typex
which gives you the following output:
typex
name1 1 2 3 4
name3 2 3 3 1
typey
name2 3 4 5 6