Re^3: remove line feed at the end

[linuxer]

That's good. Looks like it works as designed.

If you want to do special things when \ appears at the end of a line, then you should recognize it and do special things.

You are only removing it from the line and then go on with the standard action...

Consider something like this:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

my $output = '';

LINE: while ( my $line = <DATA>)  {

    chomp $line;

    # if line ended with a '\', remove '\' and save line for later out
+put
    if ( $line =~ s/\\$// ) {
        # clean indentation
        $line =~ s/^\s+/ /;
        # save line
        $output .= $line;
        next LINE;
    }
    # we have previous line(s) to consider?
    elsif ( length $output ) {
        # clean indentation
        $line =~ s/^\s+/ /;

        $line = $output . $line;
        $output = '';
    }

    print $line, $/;
}


__DATA__
{FILE}
sourcetag1
{NUMBER}
00000
11111
{SOURCE}
source1
{KEYWORD}
{AUTHOR}
author1 staff1
{HEADLINE}
DISPOSABLE DECOR: THE CUTTING EDGE DULLS FAST\
               STYLE AT A SPEED USUALLY ASSOCIATED WITH WARDROBE ITEMS
+.
{FILE}
sourcetag2
{NUMBER}
00002
{SOURCE}
sourcenam2
{KEYWORD}
{AUTHOR}
author2 staff2
a\
    b\
    c

It's your exercise to combine this with your code ;o)

BTW: why do you use the /i modifier, when replacing spaces, newlines or the backslash?