Well, there is Parse::RecDescent, but that seems to be overkill for your problem. If this is all the variation you get you are just a few 'if's away from a solution:

foreach (<$FHIN>){
   my ($dow, $month, $dom, $time, $pid, @next)= split;
   my $user= shift @next;
   if (not $user=~/^[/) {
     unshift @next, $user;
     $user= '';
   }
   my $status= shift @next;
   $status .= ' ' . shift @next until ($status=~/:$/);
   my $client= shift @next;
   ...

[download]

As you can see it is not very difficult if the variations are few and easy to differentiate.

If you have more variations I would recommend using a finite state machine. If you search this site for that name or FSM you should find a few nodes that explain what that is

In reply to Re: Parseing FTP Logs by jethro
in thread Parseing FTP Logs by PyrexKidd

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