note pbeckingham <p> It can be easily made to work if you first take out the quoted stuff. Bear in mind that this (and your) code does not handle quoted text that spans lines. <code> #! /usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; while (<DATA>) { chomp; s/'[^']+'//g; print $_, "\n" for split /XX/; } __END__ aXXbXXc abcd a little 'quote XX' quote stuff XX other </code> </p> <div class="pmsig"><div class="pmsig-329777"> <br /><br /><font size="-3">pbeckingham - typist, perishable vertebrate.</font> </div></div> 482665 482665