note toolic I don't think you nedd a nasty regex: <c> use warnings; use strict; use Scalar::Util qw(looks_like_number); while (<DATA>) { chomp; my $temp = $_; my $unit = lc chop $temp; if (looks_like_number($temp)) { print "temp = $temp : unit = $unit\n"; } } __DATA__ 55F 77c foo +0.4F </c> <p> <ul> <li>[doc://Scalar::Util] <li>[doc://lc] <li>[doc://chop] </ul> 1003909 1003909