note Eliya <p> You could alias <c>$_</c> to <c>$str</c>, which would allow you to at least get rid of the repetitive <c>"$str =~ "</c> part in every line. </p> <p> Other than that, you do have to declare somehow what to replace with what, and this get can hardly get any more compact than a list of <c>s/.../.../</c> (unless there is some pattern or regularity in the tag-substitution pairs that would allow you generate them automatically &#8212; but I suppose the ones given are not the real ones). </p> <c> for ($str) { s/tag1/subst1/; s/tag2/subst2/; s/tag3/subst3/; ... s/tag49/subst49/; } </c> 971059 971059