c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -le "use 5.010; ;; use Regexp::Common qw(number); ;; my @lines = ( qq{Line 1 = 0154.45 +02 13.56 +03 64.35 \n}, qq{Line 2 = +09 23.12 +10 8798 \n}, ); ;; my $prefix = qr{ \G (?: \A Line \s* \d+ \s* =)? \s+ }xms; for my $line (@lines) { my @numbers = $line =~ m{ $prefix \K $RE{num}{real} }xmsg; printf qq{'$_' } for @numbers; print ''; } " '0154.45' '+02' '13.56' '+03' '64.35' '+09' '23.12' '+10' '8798'