spudulike:

Following your pattern, substr($line,190,507) looks like it should be substr($line,190,317).

For what it's worth, I deal with flat files quite a bit. Generally, though, I use pack and unpack instead of substr. That way, I can use the same format string for both packing and unpacking, kinda like this:

my $packfmt = "A135A11A6A6A20A8A3A978";
my $outline = pack $packfmt,
   " ", "DATE=${mdy}", ${mdy}, ${hms}, " ", "G1ADP",
   $CLIENT_ID, " ";

# Unpack, trailing blanks preserved
(undef, $DMDY, $mdy, $hms, undef, $CLIENT_ID)
            = unpack $packfmt, $outline;

# Unpack 1: remove trailing blanks (same format, but
# using map to trim the strings):
(undef, $DMDY, $mdy, $hms, undef, $CLIENT_ID)
            = map { s/\s+$//; $_ }
              unpack $packfmt, $outline;

# Unpack 2: remove trailing blanks, different format
my $parsefmt = lc($packfmt);
(undef, $DMDY, $mdy, $hms, undef, $CLIENT_ID)
            = unpack $parsefmt, $outline;

[download]

Note: I don't have perl on my work machine, so this is (a) from memory, and (b) quite possibly a bit broken.

...roboticus

When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like your thumb.

In reply to Re: Google has failed me! Using pack and substr for fixed width file output by roboticus
in thread Google has failed me! Using pack and substr for fixed width file output by spudulike

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