William Martell wrote: > > Hello All, Hello,
> Thanks for reading my email. I am trying to read a fix length text file and > extract specific substrings from each line. I would like to extract > specific things depending on which line is being read so I can avoid picking > up trash reading every line. The pattern repeats itself over and over again > until completion, so I think I should set a counter and then use the counter > to choose which set to extract, then I will reset the counter again to > repeat the process. I am having trouble understanding how to set the > counter and determine what line is being read to extract. > > Any help or hints would be greatly appreciated. > > Here is my code.-------------------------------------------#!/perl > > open (INFILE, "artb30_short.da4") || die "Can't open artb30.da4 file."; You should include the $! variable in the error message so that you know why it failed. > my @order_detail; > > @data = <INFILE>; > > foreach $row ( @data ){ >From your code it doesn't look like you need to slurp the entire file into memory. while ( <INFILE> ) { > if( $row == 1 ){ $row contains the contents of the current line, not the line number > # extract fields for row 1 > my %item1 = ( > cust_number => substr( $line, 0, 6 ), > cust_name => substr( $line, 8, 31 ), > cycle => substr( $line, 40, 5 ), > customer_type => substr( $line, 47, 15 ), > acct_contact => substr( $line, 64, 20 ), > phone => substr( $line, 86, 15 ), > credit_limit => substr( $line, 104 ) > ); > > # trim spaces > while ( my ($key, $value) = each %item1 ) { > $value =~ s/^\s+//; #beginning spaces > $value =~ s/\s+$//; #ending spaces > } You can simplify that by using values(): for ( values %item1 ) { s/^\s+//; #beginning spaces s/\s+$//; #ending spaces } Or just the hash itself: for ( %item1 ) { s/^\s+//; #beginning spaces s/\s+$//; #ending spaces } > # save for later processing > push @order_detail, \%item1; > > [snip code] Here is one way to do it: my $file = 'artb30_short.da4'; open INFILE, $file or die "Can't open $file: $!"; my @order_detail; while ( <INFILE> ) { last if /^GROUP TOTALS/; s/\s+\Z//; # remove all trailing whitespace next unless /\d\.\d\d\Z/; # only want lines with dollar amounts at end my %item; if ( length() < 120 ) { # item 1 lines are shorter @item{ qw/cust_number cust_name cycle customer_type acct_contact phone credit_limit/ } = map { s/^\s+//; $_ } unpack 'A6 x2 A30 x2 A5 x2 A15 x2 A20 x2 A15 x2 A*', $_; # unpack'A' removes trailing whitespace so we need the map{} # to remove leading whitespace } elsif ( /^\d/ ) { # item 2 lines start with a digit @item{ qw/inv_no type inv_date current days_1_30 days_31_60 days_61_90 days_over_90 on_hold unap_cash total_ar/ } = map { s/^\s+//; $_ } unpack 'A6 x A3 x A8' . 'x3 A11' x 8, $_; } else { # item 3 lines @item{ qw/cust_totals_current cust_totals_days_1_30 cust_totals_days_31_60 cust_totals_days_61_90 cust_totals_days_over_90 cust_totals_on_hold cust_totals_unap_cash cust_totals_total_ar/ } = map { s/^\s+//; $_ } unpack 'x19' . 'x3 A11' x 8, $_; } push @order_detail, \%item; } John -- use Perl; program fulfillment -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <http://learn.perl.org/> <http://learn.perl.org/first-response>