use strict; my $test = 'The brown fox int(10) over float(200) fence.'; my %dict = ( 'brown' => 'yellow', 'int\(\d+\)' => 'int', 'float\(\d+\)' => 'float', ); for my $i ( keys %dict ) { $test =~ s/$i/$dict{$i}/gi; } print "$test\n";