You need to be a little more specific. From my reading it seems that the 27 characters never have any spaces in. Is that right? If so then what you want is either split() or the magic variable $/

If spaces can be validly placed within the codes then I would suggest that you split on spaces and then reassemble your lines until you have enough information:

$/ = ' ';
$line = '';
while($chunk = <>)
  {
    if((length($line) + length($chunk)) > 27)
      {
        # Do the line processing
        $line = '';
      }
    $line .= $chunk;
  }
# Process the final line

[download]

(Code untested of course)

In reply to Re: splitting text into lines -- code -> regex by hawtin
in thread splitting text into lines -- code -> regex by theorbtwo

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.