You probably want a real parser. Off the top of my head, I'd go with a 2-pass approach (assuming no nested curlies): 
while (my $line = <>)
{
  chomp($line);
  while ( length( $line ) )
  {
    if ( my $not_curly = /^([^{]+)/ )
    {
      push @tokens, process_not_curly($not_curly);
      $line = adjust_line($line, $not_curly);
    }
    elsif ( my $curly = /^\{([^}]+)\}/ )
    {
      push @tokens, process_curly($curly);
      $line = adjust_line($line, $curly);
    }
    else
    {
      die "can't get here, ";
    }
  }
}

[download]
and you should be able to work out process_not_curly, process_curly, and adjust_line.

Update: After further review, Roy Johnson has the right idea; I need more coffee; I still like my (re)title.

-QM
--
Quantum Mechanics: The dreams stuff is made of

In reply to Re: Parsing spaces and curly braces by QM
in thread Parsing spaces and curly braces by cochrasc

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