I have to do this quite often - it's actually very easy. You collect all fields as they come in into a hash and then output the fields once you've collected a complete set, just like Pokemon.

my @columns = qw(
    Field_1
    Field_2
    Field_3
);

my $flush = $columns[-1]; # maybe you have a better way of knowing whe
+n your set is complete

# output header:
print join("\t", @columns), "\n";

my %row;
while (<>) {
    if (/(\w+) = (.*)/) {
       $row{ $1 } = $2;
       if ($1 eq $flush) {
           print join("\t", @row{ @columns }),"\n";
       };
    } else {
       warn "Unknown line: $_";
       next;
    };
};

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In reply to Re: How to convert a row structured text file into a column structed text file by Corion
in thread How to convert a row structured text file into a column structed text file by p2perl

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