If the file is too large, don't create a list of lines in memory. You may have problems if you do it.
Instead, do open(NEWQUOTES,"newquotes.txt"); open(OTHERFILE,">otherfile.txt"); while ($line=<NEWQUOTES>) { chomp $line; my @fields = map { $_ .= " " x (255-length($_)) } split(/,/,$line); print OTHERFILE join(',',@fields) . "!\n"; } close(NEWQUOTES); close(OTHERFILE); The line my @fields = map { $_ .= " " x (255-length($_)) } split(/,/,$line); is just a shorter form of the Rob's solution for one line > my @fields = split( /\t/, $record ); > > for (my $i = 0; $i < @fields; $i++ ) { > # add 255 spaces to the field > $fields[$i] .= " " x 255; > > # removes from 255th char forward > $fields[$i] = substr($fields[$i],0,255); > } Good luck, Adriano -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]