http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=889962


in reply to Reading in Block

Before doing what the fellow monks have suggested, I'd unify the --------'s with something like this, to be on the safe side: s/{5,}/---------------------------------/;
You don't want ---- to be left in your text because there were more dashes in one separator, or segments failing to be separated because there weren't enough.