@array = unpack('A24A24A24', $line);
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...will return a three element array out of $line. Assuming the "last,first" names are unique, those could be the keys of your hash:

@names = unpack('A24A24A24', $line);
@address1 = unpack('A24A24A24', $nextline);
for (0..2) { $hash{$names[$_]}{address1} = $address1[$_]; }
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That should get you started.

But putting your data into a hash will destroy any sequence which your original data might have had and which you perhaps like to preserve when going from three columns to one column.

CountZero

"If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass compiler." - Conway's Law

Yes, Thank you so much. I can work with this. I'll get back to you on the progress. Someone else replied that they want to see the xBase code. I'll try to copy it into a reply a bit later. I'm running to work... #!/usr/bin/ignition...

I'm working on this and I've decided to stop trying to do the xBase part. The reasons are too numerous to list. It's just not getting me anywhere. I'm going to solve this with Perl and some brainpower.I transferred all files to my Linux laptop and turned off my *other* operating system

I have better tools now, I have underestimated the text processing power I have. Anyways, here's my diagram that I've printed out for myself with the fixed positions that I will be using.

1234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
+1234567890123456789012345678901234567890
         |         |         |         |         |         |         |
+         |         |         |         |
 aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, aaaaaaaaaa        aaaaaaaaaaaaa, aaaaaaaaaaaaaa   
+    aaaaaaaaaaaa, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
 bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb        bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb   
+    bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb 
 ccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc        ccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc   
+    ccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc 
 ddddddddddd ee     99999-9999        dddddddd ee        99999-9999   
+    dddddddddd ee      99999-9999 
 |                  |                 |                  |            
+    |                  |
 2                  21                39                 58           
+    75                 94
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Obviously you need to see the text without word-wrap, but you get the gist of it. The cool thing is that address1(b) and address2(c) can be grabbed as a fixed-length string and then chomped(?) or TRIMed in xBase.

The lastname(a) and firstname(a) fields need to be switched for the purposes of my new output needs.

The city(d) and state(e) can also be grabbed as a string of fixed length because I'm not interested in sorting them here.

Then I can jump directly to the zipcode position and grab 10 characters.

The issue with the intermittent 2nd address will have to wait.

The are *no* spaces between the labels. It's just one messy report.

Step 1: Figure out how to handle each line
Step 2: Learn to play with the array(s)
Step 3: Start picking out data from each line.


Then I'll do the loop and the output text file.

Be back in a few hours (I'd better make more coffee)

RF

There's perlretut and perlrequick in the standard perl distribution these days; they might help. But also, you should look into unpack() and substr() if bits of your records can be nailed to specific locations on a line.

As you already have it written in xBase, I will not go into the logic of the program itself.

1. read a row of records
2. split up the columns into three individual records

Hey! Yeah this is great. Thanks for such quick replies. I'll send over the xBase code as soon as I can. I'm looking up these other things as well.

Perl is very cool. So far I'm picking things up quickly.

I'll be back in a bit.