I am currently working on a project where I need to read in a file that contains variable length data and then to restructure it into a fixed width file type. I can open and read the entire file and put it through STDOUT, but what I am having trouble doing is I need to be able to say start record at this constant value then read down a total of 17 lines and assign each of those to a different value, then I need to read a variable number of line length section that eventually ends at a constant and put those into individual lines in a different file. What I essentially need is a way to say start at this character read each line for the next 17 and assign to values to do a printf statement for the first file which would be the header file, then I need to be able to say starting at the 18th line of that record read until the end constant and print that straight to a different file which is the detail section of the record, and then start the entire loop again. The file I am needing to break down can contain hundreds of records that need to be split out this way. While I can read the initial file in and then push it out line for line, I have not been able to do the assignments at all. Any suggestions would be immensely helpfull! Thank you!

Update - Thanks for the responses fella's, I can provide a generic set of data, obviously since what i am working on is bank data I can't supply an actual data file. File appears as such 

^L ( identifies beginning of record in file)


           John Sample
           123 MY ROAD
           Somewhere, Country ZIP
                                                                      
+                 account#

                                                                      
+                 account#
                                     begin-period-date   end-period-va
+lue

   message to include 1
   message to include 2


(line 17 should begin here as detail file with varying length. can be 
+1 line or 100 lines)


(EOE) - which is end of record marker

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what I need to do is take each record starting at ^L and assign those lines to specific values so that I can then place it into a fixed width header file with this format: 

<account#><name><address><city state zip><begin-period-date><end-perio
+d-date>

[download]

then the detail file, is really just a matter of reading line by line until the end and just dumping it into a second file.

what I have so far is really just garbage to be honest. I have this for opening the file 

open(ADDRESSIN, "filename") || die "could not open file for read: $!\n
+";
while($line = <ADDRESSIN>)

"this is where I need help"
$line1 = <name>
$line2 = <address>

[download]

I am unsure as to how to tell it to start at ^L, go down 3 lines and assign that to $line1, then to next line and assign to $line2, etc.

#to print out I am using this, or was planning on using that I should say 

printf "%-40s%-40s\n", $line1, $line2,$line3;

[download]

does this help make it more clear with what I am trying to do? well crap, I just updated and the formatting is off so it's just garbled, anyone tell me how to format this so it's legible?

Edit: g0n - formatting tags

Gents, I thank you greatly for your assistance. With what you all gave me I was able to work out a snippet that works nicely. Again. I thank you all!

In reply to File read and re-ordering by KarmicGrief

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