OK - here is some code I wrote (part of it shamelessly plagerized) because I could not find a module to satisfactorily parse your kind of data. This sould probably be retro-fitted into Text::FixedLength.

If you can figure out how to apply the 2 subroutines to your homework, power to you!:

use strict;
         #12345678901234567890123
my $str= "This    That         Other        Next      Last  ";
my $str2="One     Fine         Morning      in        May";
my $str3="Some                 format       happened";
#my $fmt= [qw(6 6 7 4)]; # Lengths of each piece
my $fmt = getLengths($str);
my ($count,$blanklen,@lengths);




#print "  Length = $_\n" for @{getLengths($str)};
for ($str, $str2, $str3){
print "----Str=[$_]  Fmt=@$fmt\n";
  print " [$_]\n" for getPiecesByFixedLength($_, $fmt);
  print "--Last--\n";
}

# --------------------------------------------------------------------
+--------
# Subroutine: getPiecesByFixedLength - given a string, delimiter, and 
+format return an arrray
# --------------------------------------------------------------------
+--------
sub getPiecesByFixedLength {
  my $OriginalStr = shift || die 'getPiecesByFixedLength: need a strin
+g';
  my $format      = shift || die 'getPiecesByFixedLength: need a forma
+t';
  ref $format eq 'ARRAY' or  die "Second param Must be array ref\n";

  my @out         = ();

  foreach ( @$format ) {
    s/\D//g; # - save only digits
    my $ThisPiece = substr($OriginalStr,0,$_);
    $ThisPiece =~ s/^\s+//;
    $ThisPiece =~ s/\s+$//;
    push @out, $ThisPiece;
    substr($OriginalStr,0,$_) = '';
  }
  return  @out;
}
# --------------------------------------------------------------------
+--------
sub getLengths{
  # Return a ref to an array containing Lengths of pieces of the strin
+g..
  my $OriginalStr=shift || die "getLengths needs string param\n";
  my ($count, @ret);

  foreach(split /(\s+)/,$OriginalStr){
     m/^\s+$/ and $ret[$count - 1]+= length($_) , next;
     $ret[$count] = length($_);
     #print "Got Piece $count [$_] Len " . length($_) . "\n";
     $count++;
  }
  wantarray? return @ret : return \@ret;
}
# --------------------------------------------------------------------
+--------
[download]

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