Yuck! I thought (hoped) that this type of file format -- mixed, fixed-format records -- had died long ago; but they seem to keep reinventing it :)
For your first example, the trick is to define a regex that will match the fields in the header line:
my $reHeader = '(\b\w+\s*)?' x 10; ## Adjust the repeat value to cover
+ the maximum no of fields
and use that to construct an unpack template to parse the following values line.
This is not 'nice code', but it demostrates the technique: #! perl -slw
use strict;
use Data::Dump qw[ pp ];
my $reHeader = '(\b\w+\s*)?' x 10;
my %data;
until( eof( DATA ) ) {
## Read the header line and remove the newline
chomp( my $header = <DATA> );
## parse the fields using the regex, ignoring undefined fields
my @keys = grep defined, $header =~ $reHeader;
## trim the trailing whitespace from the keys
s[\s*$][] for @keys;
## Use the capture position arrays (@- & @+)
## to work out the field widths and construct a template
my $tmpl = join ' ', map{
defined( $-[$_] )
? do{ my $n = $+[$_] - $-[$_]; "a$n" }
: ()
} 1 .. $#+;
## read and chomp the values line
chomp( my $vals = <DATA> );
## Extract the value fields using the template
my @vals = unpack $tmpl, $vals;
## trim leading & trailing whitespace
s[^\s*][],s[\s*$][] for @vals;
## Add the key/value pairs to the hash
@data{ @keys } = @vals;
## discard the blank line between the grouped pairs of lines.
<DATA>;
}
pp \%data; ## display the hash constructed
__DATA__
TRHYST TROFFSETP TROFFSETN AWOFFSET BQOFFSET
2 0 5 3
HIHYST LOHYST OFFSETP OFFSETN BQOFFSETAFR
5 3 0 3
CELLR DIR CAND CS
LUC083A MUTUAL BOTH NO
Outputs: C:\test>junk79
{
AWOFFSET => 5,
BQOFFSET => 3,
BQOFFSETAFR => 3,
CAND => "BOTH",
CELLR => "LUC083A",
CS => "NO",
DIR => "MUTUAL",
HIHYST => 5,
LOHYST => 3,
OFFSETN => "",
OFFSETP => 0,
TRHYST => 2,
TROFFSETN => "",
TROFFSETP => 0,
}
Extending that to apply it to all your other sections will require a little ingenuity and a lot of painstaking testing.
I do hope for your sake that the number and ordering of the different sections is well-defined, else you've got an even worse task on your hands.
Note:This assumes that field names do not contain spaces. If they do, you are in shit street.
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