If you can be sure that the FROM field never contains a string resembling the following DATE field, you can take this approach:
#! perl
use strict;
use warnings;
<DATA>; # Discard header
while (<DATA>)
{
chomp;
my @tokens = split /\s+/;
my @fields;
for (my $i = 0; $i < @tokens; ++$i)
{
if ($i == 2)
{
my $from = $tokens[$i];
until ($tokens[++$i] =~ m! ^ \d{1,2} / \d{1,2} $ !x)
{
$from .= ' ' . $tokens[$i];
}
push @fields, $from;
}
push @fields, $tokens[$i];
}
print join('|', @fields), "\n";
}
__DATA__
REQID DEST FROM DATE TIME nPa
+ges RCV
138454 mail_room Marco's Pizza 12/26 21:52 1 rcv
138446 custsvc 973 618 0577 12/26 18:44 1 rcv
138445 county2 spam 12/26 18:41 3 rcv
138444 custsvc spam 12/26 18:30 1 rcv
138439 county2 7182737253 12/26 17:54 2 rcv
138438 county2 Acme Products, Inc. 12/26 17:52 1 rcv
Output:
14:30 >perl 614_SoPW.pl
138454|mail_room|Marco's Pizza|12/26|21:52|1|rcv
138446|custsvc|973 618 0577|12/26|18:44|1|rcv
138445|county2|spam|12/26|18:41|3|rcv
138444|custsvc|spam|12/26|18:30|1|rcv
138439|county2|7182737253|12/26|17:54|2|rcv
138438|county2|Acme Products, Inc.|12/26|17:52|1|rcv
14:30 >
Update: If you know that only the third field can contain spaces, a better approach may be as follows:
- shift @fields twice to get the first two fields
- pop @fields four times to get the last four fields
- join(' ', @fields) to get the third, remaining field.
Update 29th April: Tidied the code.
Hope that helps,