If you just want to remove the extra spaces then use the \s+ construct: 

$lines[0] =~ s/\s+/ /g;

[download]
The regex says substitute 1 or more spaces with a single space. (Note: you have $line[0] which I assume is a typo). Check out perlre for more info.

-derby

In reply to Re: help! reading in special characters from file by derby
in thread help! reading in special characters from file by confused_programmer

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