Can you further describe the nature of these delimiters to me? Are you saying that they vary line-by-line, file-by-file, or some other way (arbitrary)?

In any of these cases, are you also attempting to dynamically determine the delimiters, vs coding their nature into the script ahead of time? If so, then building a regexp vs building an array to pass to a modified split seem to be about the same amount of effort. (you don't have to use eval to build a compound regexp, btw, via the use of qr references).

Anyway -- I'm shooting in the dark here. I'm really just curious about the nature of your delimeters and the effort, ultimately, that you are trying to spare yourself.

Matt