If I understood your post correctly, here's one way:
#!c:\perl\bin\perl -w
use strict;
my $currentheading;
my %hash;
my @headings;
my @array;
open(FILE,"c:\\test.txt");
while(my $line = <FILE>)
{
chomp($line);
if($line =~ /(.*?:)$/)
{
$currentheading = $1;
push @headings, $currentheading;
}
else
{
push @{$hash{$currentheading}}, $line;
}
}
for my $x(0..$#headings)
{
my $record = 0;
for my $y(0..$#{$hash{$headings[$x]}})
{
$array[$record][$x] = $hash{$headings[$x]}[$y];
$record++;
}
}
my $header = join ",",@headings;
print "$header\n";
for my $x(0..$#array)
{
my $recordline = join ",", @{$array[$x]};
print "$recordline\n";
}
This will handle missing fields in certain records. Perl will issue a warning however if a field is missing.
Note: I removed the newlines to show the data in an easily readable format. To keep them just remove the line: chomp($line);
Update:looks like pbeckingham beat me to a similar solution.
