What is the best way to parse a 488 byte record?

kfarr has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I have a very ugly COBOL record descriptor, and need to parse the record into a semicolon delimted format. For this particular record type, the first two bytes comprise the first field, the next four, etc. etc. I suspect an array would make life easy, as I can assemble the final 'product' with a join command. Any ideas?

Originally posted as a Categorized Question.

Comment on What is the best way to parse a 488 byte record?

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Re: What is the best way to parse a 488 byte record? by fundflow (Chaplain) on Jul 24, 2000 at 21:27 UTC
It sounds like all you need is this: `$out=join(";", unpack("A2A4...", $rec));` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re: What is the best way to parse a 488 byte record? by lhoward (Vicar) on Jul 24, 2000 at 21:10 UTC
The best way is probably with unpack. See the Fixed-Length Fields Question discussion. `@result = unpack "A16A20A20AA8",$input;` [download]	[reply] [d/l]