in reply to Best way(s) to process form data into fixed-length values?

Using a fixed-width text module sounds a little overkill. Instead, I would simply encapsulate one of the solutions from this thread into a small "pad_string" sub.

Also be sure to consider whether a field's data should be truncated if it exceeds the maximum width. The thread I referenced has snippets of both forms: pad-or-truncate, and just pad.

blokhead