Actually,   s/(\S{30})(\S)/$1 $2/g   flubbs and gives you 31 characters in the 2nd and following chunks of a really long 'word' unless you do: 1 while $msg =~ s/(\S{30})(\S)/$1 $2/; ...omitting the trailing '/g'.

So this would be a nice place to use a zero-width positive look-ahead assertion: $msg =~ s/(\S{30})(?=\S)/$1 /g;