my @clumsy_split = split /($re)/, $string;
my @split;
my $flag = 0;
for my $i ( 0 .. $#clumsy_split ) {
     my $field = $clumsy_split[$i];
     if ( $flag ) {
          $flag = 0;
     } elsif ( $i % 2 || length $field < $limit ) {
          push @split, $field;
          next;
     } else {
          $flag = 1;
     }
     $split[-1] .= $field;
}