I've had to do something like this awhile back so here's my baby perl version. Have fun! 
#!/usr/bin/perl-w
use win32;
use strict;

# uncomment this out if you want to input the amount of chars
#if($#ARGV < 0) {
#  die "usage: program.pl <padding chars> \n"
#    . "for example: program.pl 30\n"
#}
#my $padlength = $ARGV[0];  

my $in_name=$ARGV[0];
open(FILE,"numbers.txt") || die "numbers.pl can't open file: $!";
open(OUTPUT,">numberdump.txt") or die "numbers.pl can't open file: $!"
+;
while  (<FILE>) {
    chomp;

# sample input:
# UserID             Date
# 423Hm54 ATHENA02 10/1/2000 
# 123456Dh60 ATHENA02 10/1/2000 
# 18Dh60 ATHENA02 10/2/2000 
# 10Jch6 ATHENA05 10/2/2000 
# 54321Hh24 ATHENA05 10/2/2000 
# 21Mwm22 ATHENA03 10/2/2000 

#Look only at the summary lines where $_ == 2000
next unless ($_ =~ /2000/i);  

    # this is to clean up the first variable length field
    my $padchar = "0";
    my $count = length($_);
    my $padlength = 30;   # comment this out if using ARGV
    $padchar = $padchar x ($padlength-$count);
    print $padchar, $_, "\n";
    print OUTPUT $padchar, $_,"\n";

}
close FILE;
close OUTPUT;

# sample output:
# 000423Hm54 ATHENA02 10/1/2000 
# 123456Dh60 ATHENA02 10/1/2000 
# 000018Dh60 ATHENA02 10/2/2000 
# 000010Jch6 ATHENA05 10/2/2000 
# 054321Hh24 ATHENA05 10/2/2000 
# 00021Mwm22 ATHENA03 10/2/2000

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In reply to Re: RE: Padding out strings. by softworkz
in thread Padding out strings. by Speedfreak

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