Thank you all for the quick replies. I apologize for the ambiguity in the first post and for the delayed response. Below is my entire piece of code:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w


use strict;        # Enforce good programming rules
use warnings;    # Provides run-time warnings

my $infile;        # Variable for input file
my $outfile;    # Variable for output file
my $filetype;    # Variable to store whether the file is Standard or E
+nhanced
my @newlines;    # Array variable to hold line in incoming text file

variable.
if (not defined $ARGV[0]) {
    die "Usage: ReplaceNewLine.pl <inputfile>\n";
} else {
    $infile = $ARGV[0];
}

open(INFILE, $infile) || die "$infile not found in current location.\n
+";
chomp(my @lines = <INFILE>);
close(INFILE);

# Place header from source file into $header variable
my $header = $lines[0];

my @field = split("~", $lines[1]);

if ($field[14]) {
    $filetype = 'Enhanced';
}
else {
    $filetype = 'Standard';
}

push (@newlines, $header);

if ($filetype eq 'Enhanced') {
    # Loop through each index in the @lines array. 
    foreach my $line (@lines) {
        my @field = split("~", $line);        
        if ($field[11] eq '000015') {        
            $line =~ s/$field[12]/92/g;        
            $line =~ s/~~~~~~~~~10~/~10~/g;    
            push(@newlines,$line);            
        } 
        if ($field[11] eq '000030') {        
            $line =~ s/$field[12]/46/g;        
            $line =~ s/~~~~~10~/~10~/g;        
            push(@newlines,$line);            
        }
        if ($field[11] eq '000060') {        
            $line =~ s/$field[12]/23/g;        
            $line =~ s/~~~10~/~10~/g;        
            push(@newlines,$line);            
        }
    } # End foreach
} # End if

if (defined $ARGV[1]) {
    $outfile = $ARGV[1];
} else {
    $outfile = "resultfile.txt";
}

open my $fh, '>', $outfile or die "Cannot opent $outfile\n";
foreach (@newlines) {
    print $fh "$_\n";
}
close $fh;
[download]

And I have included two lines from the file this is altering:

MEPMD01~20080519~03092015124400AM~6202820945~PPAY RES~~0012435644-01~OK~E~KWH~~000015~96~03082015121500AM~00~0.288~00~0.2892~00~0.2778~00~0.2484~00~0.4356~00~0.3882~00~0.0702~00~0.2988~~~~~~~~~10~0.279~10~0.2796~10~0.2964~10~0.2718~10~0.2082~10~0.1242~10~0.2568~10~0.258~10~0.2958~10~0.2772~10~0.276~10~0.2928~10~0.2904~10~0.2814~10~0.2556~10~0.276~10~0.0924~10~0.4878~10~0.3366~10~0.2814~10~0.273~10~0.2778~10~0.2862~10~0.2766~10~0.288~10~0.0402~10~0.4326~10~0.2976~10~0.0366~10~0.0318~10~0.0486~10~0.3084~10~0.048~10~0.03~10~0.0246~10~0.0402~10~0.0204~10~0.0204~10~0.051~10~0.0246~10~0.0306~10~0.0342~10~0.0306~10~0.0258~10~0.0402~10~0.0384~10~0.0342~10~0.021~10~0.021~10~0.0366~10~0.0204~10~0.0312~10~0.0372~10~0.0204~10~0.0282~10~0.0432~10~0.021~10~0.0216~10~0.048~10~0.0234~10~0.0192~10~0.0372~10~0.0192~10~0.018~10~0.0474~10~0.0414~10~0.0768~10~0.0588~10~0.0558~10~0.0594~10~0.0702~10~0.1446~10~0.1068~10~0.1548~10~0.1704~10~0.0684~10~0.0936~10~0.0834~10~0.1134~10~0.0666~10~0.039~10~0.048~10~0.0414~10~0.015~

MEPMD01~20080519~03092015034100AM~2191900749~~~0012435649-01~OK~E~KWH~~000015~96~03082015121500AM~00~0.1134~00~0.9756~00~0.7554~00~0.1578~00~0.123~00~0.0966~00~0.129~00~0.141~~~~~~~~~10~0.1074~10~0.099~10~0.1338~10~0.2334~10~0.108~10~0.369~10~0.405~10~1.1484~10~0.0978~10~0.114~10~0.1182~10~0.1458~10~0.1116~10~0.1272~10~0.0996~10~0.1272~10~0.138~10~0.1146~10~0.1002~10~0.6792~10~0.2934~10~0.957~10~0.0924~10~0.0906~10~0.2772~10~0.2322~10~0.195~10~0.2172~10~0.2004~10~0.3876~10~0.5994~10~0.564~10~0.6258~10~1.3188~10~0.8532~10~1.7514~10~1.41~10~1.8036~10~1.3014~10~1.1052~10~0.6618~10~0.6342~10~0.6264~10~0.7986~10~0.648~10~0.657~10~0.684~10~1.1544~10~0.7764~10~1.8684~10~1.8576~10~1.1862~10~1.2612~10~1.4802~10~1.767~10~2.5086~10~2.2452~10~1.3728~10~0.6984~10~0.7044~10~1.956~10~1.9356~10~1.9284~10~1.7316~10~2.1882~10~1.6014~10~1.5906~10~1.8288~10~1.9512~10~1.0224~10~2.8374~10~2.6724~10~0.6828~10~0.9708~10~0.7284~10~0.8832~10~0.483~10~0.5736~10~1.191~10~0.294~10~0.3~10~0.1716~10~0.1836~10~0.1692~

My split creates an array for each string with a tilde delimiter. You can see each both line, there is a string of tildes '~~~~~~~~~' but they are at different character count in each line. Another problem is that in rare cases, this string of tildes might appear later in the line and I cannot remove it if it does.

One direction I had was to put each line array in a while loop inside that foreach and count through each element of the array and move it to the farthest null element to the left but the nested loop creates a lot of overhead for each line of text.

I hope this clears up some of the details. Again, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Pham

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