my @array = map { chomp and $_ } ; my $want = 'Julia_Roberts'; my $change = 'Cintheia'; my ( $suffix ) = map { m/\A$want(\(\S+\))\z/smx and $1 } @array; my @final = map { ( /\A($change)\z/ and "$change$suffix" ) or $_ } @array if $suffix; warn Dumper \@final; __DATA__ Julia_Roberts(1,5) Cintheia Chelsia Rohan #### perl -e 'split//,q{john hurl, pest caretaker}and(map{print @_[$_]}(join(q{},map{sprintf(qq{%010u},$_)}(2**2*307*4993,5*101*641*5261,7*59*79*36997,13*17*71*45131,3**2*67*89*167*181))=~/\d{2}/g));'