http://qs1969.pair.com?node_id=569180

SamCG has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I'm trying to parse the bodies of some automated emails. One would think it would be easy, but for some reason the generator of the emails does NOT cut lines using a \n, but by adding spaces. The number of spaces added seems to vary.

Initially I broke the email into an array by splitting on \s{15,}, but this isn't ideal, and drops some of the values. I'm considering splitting on the colons, but I'm not convinced this is a great idea and seems to lead to more headaches. Any ideas for a somewhat robust, straightforward way to parse this? 

 Security          : BULGY N V-                                       
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 Item Overridden   : Earnings Per Share                               
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 Initial Value     :  (USD)                                           
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 Current Value     :  ()                                              
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 Overridden Value  : 160 (USD)                                        
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 Effective         : 08/20/1999 through 08/20/2000                    
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 Override Type     : Data
 SecurityID        : 1076665
 Sedol             : 2451234
 Cusip             : N66696606
 ISIN              : NL0006122988

[download]
Update: Ah, I've found a potential way. while ($bdy=~/(.*?):\s(.*?)\s\s/g) seems to work alright. Comments on this approach?



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s''limp';@p=split '!','n!h!p!';s,m,s,;$s=y;$c=slice @p1;so brutally;d;$n=reverse;$c=$s**$#p;print(''.$c^chop($n))while($c/=$#p)>=1;

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