#!/usr/bin/perl

 my $string="realllylongstringthatrefusestoend <A HREF=\"http://perlmonks.org/images/blah/blah/blah\">\n";
 print splitter($string,"<.*?>",'(\S{18})','$1." "');
 sub splitter{
         my($string,$spliton,$find,$replace)=@_;
         my @array=split(/$spliton/,$string);
         my $i=0;
         my @splitters;
         my $str;
         while($string=~/($spliton)/g){
                 push @splitters,$1;
         }
         for (@array){
                s/$find/$replace/eeg; ;
                $str.=$array[$i];
                $str.=$splitters[$i];
                $i++;
         }
         $str;
 }