note kennethk <p>It seems odd that you are doing all this in a substitution rather than iterating over the results of the match, <em>e.g.</em> <c>while ($text =~ /$re/g) {...}</c>, particularly given that you are already resorting to some complex activity including an <c>e</c> modifier. However, you could do this in a fell swoop by capturing the entire block you want to reparse, and using a sub-regex in list context w/ the g modifier to return the full list: <c> $text =~ s/ (.+?) (?:\s*\n)+ ((?: \d+ (?:\sPSI)? (?:\s*\n)+ ){4}) /push @r, [ $1, $2 =~ m|\d+ (?:\sPSI)?|xg ]/esgx; </c> <p>If I were the maintenance guy that followed you, I would not think friendly thoughts when I saw that. <p>You could get something a little more maintainable by explicitly expanding your <c>{4}</c> terms: <c> $text =~ s/ (.+?) (?:\s*\n)+ (?: (\d+ (?:\sPSI)?) (?:\s*\n)+ ) (?: (\d+ (?:\sPSI)?) (?:\s*\n)+ ) (?: (\d+ (?:\sPSI)?) (?:\s*\n)+ ) (?: (\d+ (?:\sPSI)?) (?:\s*\n)+ ) /push @r, [ $1, $2, $3, $4, $5 ]/esgx; </c> which could be refactored into <c> my $sub_re = qr/ (\d+ (?:\sPSI)?) (?:\s*\n)+ /x; $text =~ s/ (.+?) (?:\s*\n)+ $sub_re $sub_re $sub_re $sub_re /push @r, [ $1, $2, $3, $4, $5 ]/esgx; </c> <p>None of this changes the fact that you have a fundamental obfuscation by using a substitution instead of a loop. <!-- Node text goes above. Div tags should contain sig only --> <div class="pmsig"><div class="pmsig-712372"> <hr /> <p>#11929 First ask yourself `How would I do this without a computer?' Then have the computer do it the same way.</p> </div></div> 1004225 1004225