my $string = '     this is a string';
my $rep;
$string =~ s/(^\s+)/$rep.=':' for(1..length($1)); "$rep"/eg;
print $string;

[download]
Something like this will do what you are looking for. Of course there are probably other ways of doing this too but this is the first that comes to my mind.

www.perlskripts.com

In reply to Re: substitute leading whitespace by Elijah
in thread substitute leading whitespace by Anonymous Monk

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