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From: PerlFAQ Server on 26 Apr 2010 00:00
This is an excerpt from the latest version perlfaq4.pod, which
comes with the standard Perl distribution. These postings aim to
reduce the number of repeated questions as well as allow the community
to review and update the answers. The latest version of the complete
perlfaq is at http://faq.perl.org .

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4.34: How do I extract selected columns from a string?

(contributed by brian d foy)

If you know where the columns that contain the data, you can use
"substr" to extract a single column.

my $column = substr( $line, $start_column, $length );

You can use "split" if the columns are separated by whitespace or some
other delimiter, as long as whitespace or the delimiter cannot appear as
part of the data.

my $line = ' fred barney betty ';
my @columns = split /\s+/, $line;
# ( '', 'fred', 'barney', 'betty' );

my $line = 'fred||barney||betty';
my @columns = split /\|/, $line;
# ( 'fred', '', 'barney', '', 'betty' );

If you want to work with comma-separated values, don't do this since
that format is a bit more complicated. Use one of the modules that
handle that format, such as "Text::CSV", "Text::CSV_XS", or
"Text::CSV_PP".

If you want to break apart an entire line of fixed columns, you can use
"unpack" with the A (ASCII) format. By using a number after the format
specifier, you can denote the column width. See the "pack" and "unpack"
entries in perlfunc for more details.

my @fields = unpack( $line, "A8 A8 A8 A16 A4" );

Note that spaces in the format argument to "unpack" do not denote
literal spaces. If you have space separated data, you may want "split"
instead.



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From: J�rgen Exner on 26 Apr 2010 00:32
PerlFAQ Server <brian(a)theperlreview.com> wrote:
> If you know where the columns that contain the data, [...]

This sentence a verb.

jue
From: brian d foy on 26 Apr 2010 13:50
In article <6p5at5dok54j88jjehstce5n6nhmv92d9q(a)4ax.com>, J�rgen Exner
<jurgenex(a)hotmail.com> wrote:

> PerlFAQ Server <brian(a)theperlreview.com> wrote:
> > If you know where the columns that contain the data, [...]
>
> This sentence a verb.

Fixed, thanks,
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