Hi JobC, welcome to the Monastery!

After writing my answer, it appears as though the #after lines are what you have already cleaned up (NOT your desired output). If that's correct, the below response is useless. Please clarify, and provide a few examples of what the final output should look like...

I may be under-thinking this, but could it be as simple as the following? Let us know if it does what you want. I simulate each one of your rows with an element in the @strings array:

use warnings;
use strict;


my @strings = (
    ',"PAD, FOAM, 24 X 24 X 1/4                #16193
    112 SHEETS PER ROLL, ORDER IN FULL ROLLS",',

    ',"PKG LIST,ASST ARM,RAD,300
    #F37784",',

    ',"PAD, TOP CAP RE17-30048          #F30121
    CORRUGATED ASSEMBLY, 22-7/8 X 21-1/8 X 4-3/4",'
);

for (@strings){
    s/\s+/ /g;
    print "$_\n\n";
}

[download]

Output:

,"PAD, FOAM, 24 X 24 X 1/4 #16193 112 SHEETS PER ROLL, ORDER IN FULL R
+OLLS",

,"PKG LIST,ASST ARM,RAD,300 #F37784",

,"PAD, TOP CAP RE17-30048 #F30121 CORRUGATED ASSEMBLY, 22-7/8 X 21-1/8
+ X 4-3/4",

[download]

In reply to Re: Extract data from CSV field. by stevieb
in thread Extract data from CSV field. by JobC

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.