#!/usr/bin/perl use Modern::Perl qw(2014); while () { my @octets = split('\.',$_); chomp @octets; for (0..2) { $octets[$_] =~ s/\d/x/g; } say join(".", @octets); } __DATA__ 1.2.3.4 192.168.0.1 255.255.255.128 23.65.98.101 #### x.x.x.4 xxx.xxx.x.1 xxx.xxx.xxx.128 xx.xx.xx.101