note toolic <p>Tip #9 from the [Basic debugging checklist] : [mod://YAPE::Regex::Explain|<c>YAPE::Regex::Explain</c>] <c> The regular expression: (?-imsx:(ther*)) matches as follows: NODE EXPLANATION ---------------------------------------------------------------------- (?-imsx: group, but do not capture (case-sensitive) (with ^ and $ matching normally) (with . not matching \n) (matching whitespace and # normally): ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ( group and capture to \1: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- the 'the' ---------------------------------------------------------------------- r* 'r' (0 or more times (matching the most amount possible)) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ) end of \1 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ) end of grouping ---------------------------------------------------------------------- </c> <p>Use . instead. Also, with different delimiters, you can clean up the replacement string: <c> use warnings; use strict; my $test = "Here is the there"; $test =~ s{(ther.)}{<test>$1</test>}ig; print "$test\n"; __END__ Here is the <test>there</test> </c> 1006098 1006098