use strict;
use warnings;
my ($wholefile,$line);
my $outfilename='orderdata.out';

{open INFILE, '<', "orderform.rtf";
 local $/; $wholefile=<INFILE>;
 close(INFILE);

 $wholefile =~ s/^\s*{.*\n//g;              # remove lines starting with braces
 $wholefile =~ s/\\[\w-]+\b//g;             # remove RTF commands
 $wholefile =~ s/(\n)\s+(\S+)/$1$2/g;       # remove extra spaces
 $wholefile =~ s/([^\\\n]+)\\(\n)/$1$2/g;   # get rid of \ at the ends of lines
 $wholefile =~ s/\\\n//g;                   # get rid of lines with a \ only

 open OUTFILE,'>',$outfilename or die "Can't open $outfilename!\n";
 print OUTFILE $wholefile;
 close(OUTFILE);
}