Hi,
I am trying to break up a long character string in an html document when it is displayed on a web page by inserting a
tag after every 80 characters that occur in the document outside the pre-existing html tags. I've tried this: 
s/(>[^<]*)([.\n]{80})/$1$2<BR>/sg

[download]
but the problem is that is "resets" its counter every time it encounters a html tag. Ie. If it finds 72 characters, then an html tag, I want it to be resume counting at 73 once it leaves the tag, instead it will not insert a <BR> until it finds an "unbroken" string of 80 characters. Is there way to do this with a single regular expression, or will I need multiple lines of code? Thanks.

edit (broquaint): added formatting + <code> tags

In reply to inserting html tags after X characters by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.