use 5.020; use warnings; # for umlauts and stuff... not really necessary # but a good idea regardless use utf8; use open qw{ :encoding(utf-8) :std }; use Scalar::Util 'looks_like_number'; my $string1 = 'foo 1foo; foo_2 foo-bar() 87 - _ !@#$% '; my $string2 = 'F? 1_1 99.00 .5 \\x87 14 fourteen !@#99$% 000'; my $test_string = $string1 . $string2; while ( $test_string =~ m/ (\S+) /gx ) { # or whatever is a "word" my ( $word, $start, $end ) = ( $1, $-[0], $+[0] ); next if $word !~ m/ \d+ /x or looks_like_number($word); say qq{"$word" has numbers, but doesn't look like number. Start: $start, end: $end}; }