Hi 'gator,

If you have a line that is fixed width columns you can unpack it based on the widths quite easily. This gets around all the probs of split and fields that can contain a variable amount of whitespace (I suspect your category field easily could)

# it goes a little like this
while (<DATA>) {
    my ($Name, $Host, $Port, $Rest)=unpack('A15A10A10A*', $_);
    # now do what you will with them
}
[download]

the A tells it to unpack ASCII, the numbers are the number of characters in each column, the A* just grabs the rest 'cos I was too lazy to count all your column widths

Festive Cheers,
R.