Re: How to process variable length fields in delimited file.

[GrandFather]

If the fixed fields really are fixed length rather than space delimited then you can pull the lines apart using a template like this:

use strict;
use warnings;

my @template = (
    'ssn 9',
    'employee number 5', 'employee name *',
    'hire date 8',
    'address *', 'state 2', 'city *', 'zip 5'
);

while (my $line = <DATA>) {
    chomp $line;
    
    my %fields;
    
    for my $field (@template) {
        my ($name, $length) = $field =~ /(.*) (.+)/;
        
        $line =~ s/^\s+//;
        $length = substr $line, 0, index ($line, ' ') + 1, '' if $leng
+th eq '*';
        $fields{$name} = substr $line, 0, $length, '';
    }
    
    print "$_: $fields{$_}\n" for keys %fields;
}

__DATA__
123445678 45612 11 Steve Smith 11012015 16 1001 Main Street GA 7 Atlan
+ta 30553

Prints:

employee number: 45612
state: GA
hire date: 11012015
city: Atlanta
zip: 30553
ssn: 123445678
employee name: Steve Smith
address: 1001 Main Street

For output I'd strongly recommend using a module like Text::CSV to generate correctly formatted CSV files.