formline with a format would probably do it.
use strict;

my $str="Reports that say that something hasn't ".
        "happened are always interesting to me " .
        "because as we know, there are known knowns; ".
        "there are things we know we know. We also ".
        "know there are known unknowns; that is to ".
        "say we know there are some things we do not ".
        "know. But there are also unknown unknowns --".
        " the ones we don't know we don't know.";
        
my $picture = '^<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ~~'."\n";

formline ($picture, $str);
print "$^A\n";

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Adjust the picture variable to suite your needs. If the number of chars is variable, it is fairly simple to construct the format using the 'x' operator

In reply to Re: Breaking the lines by cdarke
in thread Breaking the lines by Ben Win Lue

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