I'm an old Assembler and COBOL programmer. I have need to write some flat file conversion programs. I'll be reading one 7KB record at a time and parsing it into multiple records to be written, along with reformatting a few fields and generating a few more.

Just on what I have described here, do ou think perl is a good tool for the job?

Thanks.

Update

I need to write some conversion programs that: * Read a large record, about 7KB * Parse the data into multiple record formats and write them out * Generate record type fields 'a '1' record is patient info, a '2' is lab sample data, a '3' is diagnosis information.. at the end of each record is a 0 or a 1 indicating whether or not it is the last one of its type for this patient, so I have to keep track of where I am in the record arrays and whether or not I have a new patient in a record or a new test for the same one) * Reformat several data fields, usually stripping out some characters. My question to all of you would have to be is perl a good choice for this type of activity? It woudl be a perfect application for a COBOL program, but this facility has no COBOL compiler. Thanks

Material from duplicate node added as update and formating added by GrandFather

In reply to New to PERL - file format conversions to do by Mikhailoh

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