Contrary to toolic's suggestion, I think you are right to try for an array of hashes, because you probably can't count on the "last name" field to be unique across all records.

So, to build on the otherwise fine code of the first reply: 

use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;

my @clients;  # make this an array, not a hash;
my @fields = qw/surname firstname town/;

while (<DATA>) {
    next if ( /^Surname/ or /^-/ );
    my @values = unpack 'A13A16A20', $_;
    my %entry = map { $fields[$_] => $values[$_] } ( 0..$#fields );
    push @clients, \%entry;
}
print Dumper(\@clients);

__DATA__
Surname L20, First Name L20, Town L20 
-------------------------------------------------- 
Chaplin      Charlie         Basel 
Estevez      Emilio Santa    Manica 
Sarte        Jean Paul       Montmarte 
Rikard       Frank           Amsterdam 
Rodin        Paul            Montmarte

[download]

(update: it does seem odd that the field widths in the column headings do not match the actual widths used in the data and in the unpack spec. It would be better if the headings were consistent with the data, but that's a minor point...)

In reply to Re: How to read data file into an array of hashes by graff
in thread How to read data file into an array of hashes by fseng

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