c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -MData::Dump -le "my @ra = ( 'keyword1 data1 data2 data3', 'keyword2 data1 data2 data3', ' data4 data5', ' data6', 'keyword1 data1 data2 data3 data4', 'keyword3 data1', ); ;; my $rx_continuation = qr{ \A \s+ \w }xms; ;; my $current_line; LINE: for my $line (@ra) { if ($line =~ $rx_continuation) { $current_line .= $line; next LINE; } ;; _process($current_line) if $current_line; $current_line = $line; } ;; _process($current_line) if $current_line; ;; dd \@ra ;; ;; sub _process { print qq{'$_[0]' ->}, map qq{ '$_'}, split ' ', $_[0]; } " 'keyword1 data1 data2 data3' -> 'keyword1' 'data1' 'data2' 'data3' 'keyword2 data1 data2 data3 data4 data5 data6' -> 'keyword2' 'data1' 'data2' 'data3' 'data4' 'data5' 'data6' 'keyword1 data1 data2 data3 data4' -> 'keyword1' 'data1' 'data2' 'data3' 'data4' 'keyword3 data1' -> 'keyword3' 'data1' [ "keyword1 data1 data2 data3", "keyword2 data1 data2 data3", " data4 data5", " data6", "keyword1 data1 data2 data3 data4", "keyword3 data1", ]