note cdarke <i>this 'data' is a regular expression</i><br><br>No, it is not a regular expression, only the <code>duck</code> is a regular expression. [doc://s] is a Perl operator. If you can it would be a lot easier to have two columns, the first being the RE pattern ('duck') and the second being the replacement text ('luck') and then read them into variables (using [doc://split]) - it is perfectly valid (and common) to store an RE in a Perl variable.<br><br>Otherwise you will be reduced to doing nasty things like [doc://eval], and you don't want to go there. 870806 870806