c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -le "my $line = qq{foo \n ACCESSION NUMBER: 0001144204-09-017358 bar}; print qq{[[$line]]}; ;; my $rx_acc_num = qr{ \d+ (?: - \d+)* }xms; ;; my $acc_num; if ($line =~ m{ ^ \s* ACCESSION \s* NUMBER: \s* ($rx_acc_num) }xms) { $acc_num = $1; $acc_num =~ tr/-//d; } print qq{'$acc_num'}; " [[foo ACCESSION NUMBER: 0001144204-09-017358 bar]] '000114420409017358'