This looks simple, but it's not. You can't use split to get the data, since the boundaries may be as small as one space and the data itself may contain spaces. Unpack gives errors if you try to access a position outside the string, so the last line is a major problem too. About the best you can do is the following, and it requires loading the whole set of data into memory at once to be even this neat.

EDIT: I updated my code for the wrapping text and for reading line by line instead of all at once. 

use strict;
use warnings;

my (@col1, @col2);

do {} until index(<DATA>, 'INTERESTING CODE') != -1;
<DATA> for (0..1);
while (<DATA>) {
    $_ .= ' ' x (67 - length $_);
    @_ = unpack 'x2A8x1A23x1A8x1A23', $_;
    push @col1, $_[1] if $_[0];
    push @col2, $_[3] if $_[2];
}

print '"' . join(', ', @col1, @col2) . '"';

__DATA__
blah blah blah

blah blah blah
blah blah blah
          blah blah blah

INTERESTING CODE--
  CODE     NAME                    CODE     NAME                      
  -------- ----------------------- -------- -----------------------
  ABC      NAME ONE                RST      NAME EIGHT ...   
  DEF      NAME TWO THREE          WXY      NAME NINE - TEN
  GHIJK    NAME FOUR ...           ZAB      NAME ELEVEN
  LMN      NAME FIVE - SIX         CDE      NAME TWELVE
  OPQ      NAME SEVEN 

more blah
blah blah

[download]

In reply to Re: Extracting formatted text block by TedPride
in thread Extracting formatted text block by punkish

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