This short script takes a file with too much whitespace (broken.txt) and shortens each section of multiple spaces to a single space. Useful if you're sent a hybrid fixed-width/space-delimited file.

shorten_whitespace.pl

#-------------------------------------------------------------------------
# This script fixes an almost fixed width file farked on a number of lines.
# It outputs a nicer space-delimited one.
#------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
 
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
print "Starting...\n";
 
$rowcount = 0;
open(MRFILE, "broken.txt");
while (<MRFILE>){
	#update rowcount		
	$rowcount++;
	print "Now on row ",$rowcount,"\n";

	#shorten whitespace
	my $myline = $_;
	#print "Before: ",$myline;
	$myline =~ s/\s+/ /g;
	#print "After: ",$myline;
 	
	open(MYDATA, ">>fixed.txt");
 
	# write the pipe-delimited line to the new file
	print MYDATA $myline,"\n";
 
	# finally, terminate the file
	close MYDATA;
}
 
close LOG;