And your Perl code to join the lines is...

Hint: use three-argument form of substr to check the 72nd symbol of the line and use it again to replace the text. For example:

my $one = ("_"x9)."*__\n";
my $two = ("-"x15)."\n";
print "$one$two";
substr($one,9)="" if substr($one,9,1) eq "*";
print "$one$two";
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