I would use unpack(). as a for-example, something like: 
$LINEFORMAT = "A10 A20 A15 A12"; # adjust to your field widths

my @fields;

# presuming the input is stdin. otherwise, chop it into lines however 
+you like
while (<>) {
    my @line = unpack $LINEFORMAT, $_;
    if ($line[0]) { # new record
        if ($fields[0]) {       # already have a record read in, print
+ it
            print join ("|", @fields), "\n";
            @fields = ();
        }
        @fields = @line;
        $fields[0] =~ s/^\r//; # strip linefeeds.
    } else {
        $fields[$_] .= " $line[$_]" for 0..$#line;
    }

}

# print the last record
print join ("|", @fields), "\n";

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In reply to Re: Converting a fixed-width report to an Excel-friendly format by Anonymous Monk
in thread Converting a fixed-width report to an Excel-friendly format by loris

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