Update: I went with tilly's suggestion to use unpack, however I'm not sure that I did this efficiently. I first did an unpack into 2 columns, then broke it up from there, unpacking each column. This actually runs slower than my regex version, but it is a little nicer on the eyes. Suggestions are very welcome!

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use Text::Soundex;

my $PHONE_LIST     =     "$ENV{HOME}/phone_list";
my %seen;
my $cntr;

if(@ARGV == 0 || $ARGV[0] eq '-?' || $ARGV[0] eq '-h') { 
    print "\nUsage: $0 <last name> ...\n\n";
    exit 1;
}

open(PL, "$PHONE_LIST") || die "Can't open $PHONE_LIST: $!";

while(<PL>) {
    foreach my $name (@ARGV) {
        my $code = soundex($name);
        my @name_list;
        undef @name_list;

        my ($column_one, $column_two) = unpack("a40a40", $_);
        
        if($code eq soundex(split(/,/, $column_one))) {
            @name_list = unpack("a18a5a7", $column_one);
        } elsif($code eq soundex(split(/,/, $column_two))) {
            @name_list = unpack("a18a5a7", $column_two);
        }

        if(defined(@name_list)) {
            $seen{$name}++; 

            if(++$cntr == 1) {
                printf("\n %-24s %-9s %-5s\n ", 
                    "Last, First M", "Ext", "Rm#");
                print "=" x 40, "\n";
            }

            printf("%-25s %-8d %-5s\n", @name_list);
        }
    }
}

foreach my $name (@ARGV) {
    if(! exists($seen{$name})) {
        print "\nNot found: $name";
    }
}

print "\n";
close(PL);
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