How can I manipulate fixed-record-length files?

The most efficient way is using pack() and unpack(). This is faster than using substr() when taking many, many strings. It is slower for just a few.

Here is a sample chunk of code to break up and put back together again some fixed-format input lines, in this case from the output of a normal, Berkeley-style ps:

    # sample input line:
    #   15158 p5  T      0:00 perl /home/tchrist/scripts/now-what
    $PS_T = 'A6 A4 A7 A5 A*';
    open(PS, "ps|");
    print scalar <PS>; 
    while (<PS>) {
	($pid, $tt, $stat, $time, $command) = unpack($PS_T, $_);
	for $var (qw!pid tt stat time command!) {
	    print "$var: <$$var>\n";
	}
	print 'line=', pack($PS_T, $pid, $tt, $stat, $time, $command),
		"\n";
    }