G'day tj999,

Reading your entire file into a string and then stepping through that string with a regex could be problematic. Given you know the exact record structure, I'd question whether a regex is even an appropriate tool in this case. Perhaps something as simple as the following would suffice. 

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my $sep = ',-->';
my $sep_len = length $sep;
my $tail = ",\n";
my $last;

while (<DATA>) {
    my ($first, undef, $second) = unpack "A3 A$sep_len A3";
    print $last, $sep, $second, $tail if defined $last;
    $last = $first;
}

__DATA__
123,-->456,
456,-->234,
234,-->789,
789,-->123,

[download]

Output:

123,-->234,
456,-->789,
234,-->123,

[download]

See also:

[I was going to comment on various aspects of your code. I can see haukex has already addressed this; so, rather than repeating it, I'll just say I concur with all the points he's made.]

— Ken

In reply to Re: Multi Line Regex Matches... by kcott
in thread Multi Line Regex Matches... by tj999

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