Note also, as an alternative to substr, that pack with the A template will either truncate or pad to the right with spaces.

johngg@shiraz:~/perl/Monks$ perl -Mstrict -Mwarnings -MData::Dumper -e
+ '
open my $inFH, q{<}, \ <<__EOD__ or die $!;
abcdef
abcdefg
abcde
 bcdefgh
 bcd    
__EOD__

chomp( my @lines = <$inFH> );
close $inFH or die $!;

my $width  = 6;
my $height = 4;

my $raRect = makeRect( \ @lines, $width, $height );

print Data::Dumper->Dumpxs( [ $raRect ], [ qw{ raRect } ] );

sub makeRect
{
    my( $raLines, $width, $height ) = @_;
    my @rect;
    push @rect, pack qq{A$width}, shift @{ $raLines } for 1 .. $height
+;
    return \ @rect;
}'
$raRect = [
            'abcdef',
            'abcdef',
            'abcde ',
            ' bcdef'
          ];

[download]

I hope this is of interest.

Cheers,

JohnGG

In reply to Re: rectangularizing input to become array by johngg
in thread rectangularizing input to become array by Aldebaran

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.