Yes, I tried /s and decided that the more efficient (?) tr would be just as well to present since they gave equally "not quite right" results. And BTW, it's cheating to repeat the last two lines of the format! :-) I have a little subroutine on the side that builds up the format string all by itself, i.e. no human intervention to say how many times to 'repeat' the lines. Although if some sample code shows how this is actually a solution, bring it on!

The other thing is, in what appears to be output below the __END__ statement, we have lost the hanging block effect I have in mind for $line. The fact that my sample text ($line) with the newlines is a signature block is irrelevant; I'm just trying to build a general purpose format statement that plays out a variable that happens to have embedded newlines. Thanks though!