parsing columns

Hi all,
I have a text file with columns, where the columns may not be aligned,
and not all lines may have data in all columns:

header1 header2 header3 header4
------------------------------------------------------------
l1dat1 l1dat2 l1dat3 l1dat4
l2dat1 l2dat4
l3veryveryveryverylongdat1 l3dat2

As you can see, line1 has all data, line2 is missing clomuns 2 and 3,
line 3 is a mess :)

Any thoughts on parsing such a "table"?
Please don't offer solutions suggesting to change the way the text
file is written, I have no control over that...

Regards,
--
Offer Kaye
.

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