c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -le "use Data::Dump qw(dd); ;; my $s = 'ab THE c RAIN def IN g SPAIN hi FALLS jk MAINLY l ON m'; print qq{$s}; ;; my @off_len; while ($s =~ m{ [[:upper:]]+ }xmsg) { push @off_len, [ $-[0], $+[0]-$-[0] ]; } dd \@off_len; ;; my @repl = qw(FOURSCORE AND 7 YEARS AGO OUR FATHERS XXX YYY); ;; my $least_i = $#off_len < $#repl ? $#off_len : $#repl; for my $rli (reverse 0 .. $least_i) { my ($off, $len) = @{ $off_len[$rli] }; substr $s, $off, $len, $repl[$rli]; } print qq{$s}; " ab THE c RAIN def IN g SPAIN hi FALLS jk MAINLY l ON m [[3, 3], [9, 4], [18, 2], [23, 5], [32, 5], [41, 6], [50, 2]] ab FOURSCORE c AND def 7 g YEARS hi AGO jk OUR l FATHERS m