#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use 5.018;
use strict;
#1149716 

=head

I would like to extract a piece of data from one field that has multiple fields in it. The original field is a long description that usually contains a #F123456, #123456, #123-F123456, #123-123456, or #12AB-123456 in it. This data floats around from left to right and there should be whitespace before the #. Also, the end of the data is either whitespace, or the end of the field. 

=cut


my @data = ("TRAY HINGED PLSTC 20 CAV #F32473",
			 "BOX HSC,35-3/4X17-1/4 X 50-1/2  SIMULATOR TALL BOX",
 			 "PAD, FOAM, 24 X 24 X 1/4                #16193                                   
 112 SHEETS PER ROLL, ORDER IN FULL ROLLS",
 		     "PKG LIST,ASST ARM,RAD,300
 #F37784",
          	 "PAD, TOP CAP RE17-30048          #F30121                                      
 CORRUGATED ASSEMBLY, 22-7/8 X 21-1/8 X 4-3/4",
             "foo bar #379460 best F11",
			 "F1234 SIMULATION",
		   );

for my $data (@data) {
	# say "\t|$data|\n\n";
	chomp $data;
	if ( $data =~ /\n/ ) {
		$data =~ s/\n//g;
	}

	if ( $data =~ /(^.* #[A-Z]*\d+.*$)/m ) {
		say "\n\$data matches regex\n";
		$data =~ s/ +/ /g; 	   # clean up excess spaces
		say "$data \n";
	} else {
		say "\n\t The data, $data, does NOT MATCH\n";
	}
}