note Utilitarian Neatened up your regular expressions a bit: <c> print "Enter a string (enter quit or [CTRL]-D to quit): "; while(<>) { $line = $_; last if ($_ =~ /^\s*quit\s*$/i); next if ($_ =~ /^\s~*$/); if($line =~ /\s*[a-zA-Z\s]+\s*-?\d+\s*/) { print $_; } } </c> <!-- Node text goes above. Div tags should contain sig only --> <div class="pmsig"><div class="pmsig-681898"> <c>print "Good ",qw(night morning afternoon evening)[(localtime)[2]/6]," fellow monks."</c> </div></div> 1004466 1004466