Ahh, boy is my face red.
Thanx
SparkeyG

if( /^\s*>/ ) {
    
    print "$'\n";
    createTable( $' );
    
}

sub createTable {
    print shift;
}
[download]

I may be wrong (I've only read Mastering Regular Expressions once), but doesn't using $&, $' or $` anywhere in your program cause some fairly severe performance issues?

Looks like the regex originally used should work - just trying to print $_ instead of $_[0]

Yep, you are right. From perlre:

WARNING: Once Perl sees that you need one of $&, $`, or $' anywhere in the program, it has to provide them for every pattern match. This may substantially slow your program. Perl uses the same mechanism to produce $1, $2, etc, so you also pay a price for each pattern that contains capturing parentheses. (To avoid this cost while retaining the grouping behaviour, use the extended regular expression (?: ... ) instead.) But if you never use $&, $` or $', then patterns without capturing parentheses will not be penalized. So avoid $&, $', and $` if you can, but if you can't (and some algorithms really appreciate them), once you've used them once, use them at will, because you've already paid the price. As of 5.005, $& is not so costly as the other two.

   MeowChow                                   
               s aamecha.s a..a\u$&owag.print

You can't use $_ in stead of @_ like that. You want to change the subroutine to one of:

sub createTable
{
  my $value = shift;
  print $value;
}

# or

sub createTable
{
  print $_[0]; # subscript means array
}
[download]

The $x syntax only works for @x variables when followed by a subscript in []'s. See perlvars for LOTS of details :-)