Here is the devil in the details of the true layout and an example of 1 data line

The squirrel is always in the details, since the devil is a squirrel. But I can't help you here with the data you provided (only one record? seriously?) since in "39 router174.network.microsoft.com" - well, "router174.network.microsoft.com" is just 31 chars long, not 39. Even with a NULL terminator it would be 32 chars long, not 39. Hence, the following is just bull - you know, garbage in => garbage out.

while (<>) { s/\r?\n//; # strip line endings # get field numbers and field description if (/\s{2,3}(\d+)\. (.+)/) { my ($number, $text) = ($1,$2); $number--; # since first element of an array is 0, not 1 # if this field denotes string length, store it if ($text =~ /string length/i) { push(@lengths, $number); } # remember field number and text (only if not previously seen) $names{$number} = $text unless $names{$number}; next; # nothing else to do for this line. } # now process the one line of data, if at hand if (/^====>/) { # Record Starter, right? # split line at whitespace my @array = split; # for all length indicators, concatenate # subsequent array elements into one # complain if the size doesn't fit for my $index (@lengths) { my $length = $array[$index]; my $string; my $counter = 1; while (length $string < $length) { # join array elements with space to rebuild the field $string = join " ", $string, $array[$index + $counter] +; warn "length mismatch for $string: $length <=> ".lengt +h $string,"\n" if length $string > $length + 1; } # weed out concatenated elements from array splice @array, $index + 1, $counter; } # done, output the fields for (sort {$a <=> $b} keys %names) { print "$names{$_}: $array[$_]\n"; } } }
perl -le'print map{pack c,($-++?1:13)+ord}split//,ESEL'

In reply to Re^2: How to process variable length fields in delimited file. by shmem
in thread How to process variable length fields in delimited file. by dbach355

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