toolic's solution is pretty good, though for padding I usually prefer making that padding obvious: 
my $address = "$strnum $strname $strtype $strdir";
$address =~ s/\s+/ /g;
$address .= ' ' while length $address < 37;

[download]
Note that I've also made the code agnostic as to the kind of whitespace.

That approach has a lot more operations, but reads easily. Another question to consider is are address guaranteed to be less than 38 characters, and if not should you truncate. So you might do that one as 

my $address = sprintf '%-37.37s', "$strnum $strname $strtype $strdir" 
+=~ s/\s+/ /rg;

[download]
where I've truncated to 37, used sprintf and the r modifier, and put it on one line to make it as inobvious as possible.

#11929 First ask yourself `How would I do this without a computer?' Then have the computer do it the same way.

In reply to Re: Remove whitespace in string and maintain overall length by kennethk
in thread Remove whitespace in string and maintain overall length by silentbob343

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.