use strict;
my $str = '[30-05-2013 15:45:54] A A
[26-06-2013 14:44:44] B A
[26-06-2013 14:44:44] C A
[26-06-2013 14:43:16] Some lines are so large, they take multiple lines, so explode(\'\\n\') won\'t work because
I need the complete message
[26-06-2013 14:44:44] E A
[26-06-2013 14:44:44] F A
[26-06-2013 14:44:44] G A';
my $regex = qr/\R+(?=\[\d{2}-\d{2}-\d{4} \d{2}:\d{2}:\d{2}])/p;
my $subst = '\\n--------------\\n';
my $result = $str =~ s/$regex/$subst/rg;
print "The result of the substitution is' $result\n";
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for Perl, please visit: http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html