foreach my $number(@transaction_numbers) { my $result =`command to get result`; print $result; while ($result =~ /transaction (\d+).*user:\s*(\S+)\s*#\s*(.*)/g) { my ($transaction, $user, $comment) = ($1, $2, $3); printf "%-12s %-10s %s\n", $1, $2, $3; } }