Consider (and, answer too, please) this question.

• Are there guaranteed to be exactly three dashes before the first space?

If so, you may immediately see a regex solution: have your first capture contain everything up to the first space.

And since you say you know how to deal with your other desired replacements, the answer to question two is embedded in this node's question, above.

And, just BTW, please use code tags ( <c>...</c> ) around data like that you've shown. See Writeup Formatting Tips and Markup in the Monastery.