I just spent an hour trying to turn: $string = 'foo|bar|blah|stuff|crap'; into: $new_string = 'foo\nbar\nblah\nstuff\ncrap'; Unfortunately I was using "split" in the same manner as "join", which doesn't fly: $new_string = join("\n", split("|", $string)); Of course, it should be: $new_string = join("\n", split(/\|/, $string)); Sigh... dave