Hmm thanks for the reply but I'm not sure I understand how this will work.
The regular expression held in $exp looks like this 
(?-xism:(?ig:(?:create table ([a-z]|[_])+(?{$self->{m}=1})|insert \b([
+a-z]|[_])+\b (?{$self->{m}=3})|lock table(?{$self->{m}=0})|grant(?{$s
+elf->{m}=2}))))

[download]
If I understand your answer correctly (it's highly plausible that I don't !) you are suggesting that I split the line based on this regex ?
So that makes the suggested code look like this ? 
my @parts = split /(?=(?-xism:(?ig:(?:create table ([a-z]|[_])+(?{$sel
+f->{m}=1})|insert \b([a-z]|[_])+\b (?{$self->{m}=3})|lock table(?{$se
+lf->{m}=0})|grant(?{$self->{m}=2})))))/, $text;

[download]
I'm only just past novice stage with Perl but that doesn't look right to me ?

In reply to Re^2: Splitting a string based on a regex by Anonymous Monk
in thread Splitting a string based on a regex by Anonymous Monk

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