Something like this is probably all you need

sub get_text {
    my ($text, $cols) = @_;
    $cols ||= 80;
    require Text::Wrap;
    $Text::Wrap::columns = $cols;
    # tabs to 4 spaces
    $text =~ s/\t/    /g;
    # now wrap it
    $text = Text::Wrap::wrap('','',$text);
    # iterate over chunks, escaping HTML and linking
    $text =~ s{(\S+)}
              { local $_ = $1;
                m/^(?:http|ftp)/ ? qq!<a href="$_">!.escapeHTML($_).qq
+!</a>! :
                m/^www\./        ? qq!<a href="http://$_">!.escapeHTML
+($_).qq!</a>! :
                m/^[^@]+@[^@]/   ? qq!<a href="mailto:$_">!.escapeHTML
+($_).qq!</a>! :
                                   escapeHTML($_);
              }ge;
    # fix whitespace (and newlines if not using pre tags)
    $text =~ s/( {2,})/"&nbsp;" x length $1/eg;
    #$text =~  s/\n/<br>\n/g;
    # wrap in pre tags
    $text = '<pre>' . $text . '</pre>';
  return $text;
}

sub escapeHTML {
    my ( $escape ) = @_;
  return '' unless defined $escape ;
    $escape =~ s/&/&amp;/g;
    $escape =~ s/"/&quot;/g;
    $escape =~ s/</&lt;/g;
    $escape =~ s/>/&gt;/g;
    $escape =~ s/([^\000-\177])/'&#' . (sprintf "%3d", ord $1) . ';'/e
+g;
  return $escape;
}
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