Here's an example of a some code that will take a defined "pattern" for a datafile, and then parse input from the datafile based on the pattern. It could probably be trimmed up a lot, but it may be useful!

#it definately needs a little cleanup later...

    if (! $in{'batchfile'} )
    {
        die("You must select a file to be uploaded");
    }
    else
    {

        #Any formatting information. Text or numbers are grabbed as fi
+elds
        #This can be in almost ANY format/order as you want, so long
        #as text/numbers are only used as fields, and no weird need-to
+-be-escaped
        #stuff
        #(note: you could modify this to grab it as the first line fro
+m the uploaded file)
        $format=$in{'format'};

        #Batchfile is the data input file
        $data=$in{'batchfile'};
        my @records;
        $reg_format_in=$format;
        #replace any words/numbers with a regexp...
        $reg_format_in =~ s/([\w|\d]+)/\(\[\\w\|\\d\]\+\)/gi;

        #replace any spaces with a regexp for spaces
        $reg_format_in =~ s/\s+/\\s\+/gi;
        $_ = $format;
        my $order=0;
        my @matches;
        #go through each matched pattern, mark the index and what was 
+in that position
        while ( m/([\w|\d]+)/g)
        {
            $matcheditem=$1;
            $indx =index($format, $matcheditem);
            $matches[$order]=$matcheditem;
            $order++;
        }
        $matchcount=@matches;
        @lines = split(/\n/, $data);
        foreach $line(@lines)
        {
            my $pattern;
            $_ = $line;
            my @rmatch = m/^$reg_format_in/g;
            $reccount=@records;
            #this makes a $records[x]{name} per each line
            for (my $indx=0; $indx<$matchcount; $indx++)
            {
                $records[$reccount]{$matches[$indx]}=$rmatch[$indx];
            }
        }
    }

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In reply to Randomly parsed fields by darkphorm

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