use strict;
my $str = 'Lorem ipsum et cras praesent mollis ullamcorper laoreet mauris imperdiet quisque
- red
- green
- blue
Lorem ipsum et cras praesent mollis ullamcorper laoreet mauris imperdiet quisque
ac adipiscing mauris ante class placerat per sem quisque phasellus sociosqu, mollis
- red
- green
- blue
bluorem ipsum et cras praesent mollis ullamcorper laoreet mauris imperdiet quisque';
my $regex = qr/(?m)(?<=^[^-].*\n(?=- )|^- .*\n(?!- ))/ip;
my $subst = '\\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