c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -MData::Dump -le "my $normal = qr{ 0{7} [0-9] }xms; ;; my $line = '00000000 FFFFFFFF 00000001 6C163512 00000002 ' . 'ffffffff 00000003 0000009 00000004 000000009 ' . '0 00 000 0000 00000 000000 0000000 000000000 ' . '00000005' ; print qq{line: '$line'}; ;; my @all_ok = $line =~ m{ \b $normal \b }xmsg; dd \@all_ok; " line: '00000000 FFFFFFFF 00000001 6C163512 00000002 ffffffff 00000003 0000009 00000004 000000009 0 00 000 0000 00000 000000 0000000 000000000 00000005' [ "00000000", "00000001", "00000002", "00000003", "00000004", "00000005", ]