I am looking for a "smooth" way to modify the code I'm simulating below... I read in a file "line-by-line" to an array and split on newline, leaving just the value of the line without the \n ... So I can create a delimited line of several items... first example
Where I get in trouble is where a line read in is blank, which shifts everything to the left in the output (notice the rogue ; at the end) because splitting on the newline leaves an empty entry... second example
I can check for an empty line and put a space in there which works, but it's just not sexy... third example 

$ perl -e 'BEGIN{@words = ("one\n","two\n","three\n","four\n","five\n"
+,"six\n",)} $a=0;printf("%s;%s;%s;%s;%s;%s\n",(split/\n/,@words[$a]),
+(split/\n/,@words[$a+1]),(split/\n/,@words[$a+2]),(split/\n/,@words[$
+a+3]),(split/\n/,@words[$a+4]),(split/\n/,@words[$a+5])       );'

one;two;three;four;five;six

$ perl -e 'BEGIN{@words = ("one\n","two\n","three\n","\n","five\n","si
+x\n",)} $a=0;printf("%s;%s;%s;%s;%s;%s\n",(split/\n/,@words[$a]),(spl
+it/\n/,@words[$a+1]),(split/\n/,@words[$a+2]),(split/\n/,@words[$a+3]
+),(split/\n/,@words[$a+4]),(split/\n/,@words[$a+5])       );'  

one;two;three;five;six;

perl -e 'BEGIN{@words = ("one\n","two\n","three\n"," \n","five\n","six
+\n",)} $a=0;printf("%s;%s;%s;%s;%s;%s\n",(split/\n/,@words[$a]),(spli
+t/\n/,@words[$a+1]),(split/\n/,@words[$a+2]),(split/\n/,@words[$a+3])
+,(split/\n/,@words[$a+4]),(split/\n/,@words[$a+5])       );'

one;two;three; ;five;six

[download]

I've been messing with this for 2 days now, and I'm wondering if anyone has a different way of thinking to share?

tia

In reply to split on newline by tbone654

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