If you just need to break lines for output, Text::Wrap can help:

use warnings;
use strict;
use Text::Wrap qw(wrap);

$Text::Wrap::columns = 55;

my $text = 'Perl 5 is a highly capable, feature-rich programming langu
+age with over 27 years of development.';
print wrap('', '', $text), "\n";

__END__

Perl 5 is a highly capable, feature-rich programming
language with over 27 years of development.
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