note ninja-joe Here's a simple modification to the example code that will show what the regex matched when you typed it in: <code> #!/usr/bin/perl while(<>) { chomp; # chomp so this next output is pretty. # newlines aren't discarded when you <> print "\"$1\" was matched out of \"$_\"" if m/(your_pattern)/; } </code> Be sure to include the parenthesis around the entire regex that way it will save what it matches in $1.<br><br> Do recall that while the regex operators are greedy by default you can suffix them with ? and they'll go to nongreedy. An example: <code> #!/usr/bin/perl while(<>) { chomp; print "\"$1\" was matched out of \"$_\"\n" if m/(\w{5}?)/; } </code> This will match "mywor" out of "myword"<br><br> Have fun regexing. 967 8619