A similar question is in ASCII to HTML. To answer your direct question, I would use: $message =~ tr/\n\r//d; This deletes any linefeeds or carriage returns. It's much more efficient than the s/// operator. If you want to format the text for display, you might use btrott's oneliner: $message = join "\n<p>\n", grep s/\n/<br>\n/g || 1, split /\n\n/, $message;