http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=157481

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I have a text file that has multiple tabs between entries and I need to get rid of all but one, and therefore have a common delimeter, such as "\t" so when I parse this file into a MySQL database it will not add any blank spots where there should be a data entry.

Any help is appreciated, this is for a case study program, not homework. Here is a sample line entry from the text file that is being parsed:

These are the heading variables where I want the text entry to be put into, I have a program that actually inserts the text file into the database, but there are problems when there are extra tabs or whitespace inside an entry.
'$id_num','$firstname','$lastname','$grade','$grad','$addr','$city','$ +state','$zip','$phone','$dob','$sex','$id_num2'


Here is a dummy entry:<br> 1415 John Doe +10 2004 1380 SE 8TH AVE ANYTOWN + OR 90210 5556611 11/16/85 M 1415