use 5.010; use warnings; use strict; my $port_name = quotemeta 'sdm_yout_i[1]'; while () { if (/\.([0-9a-z_]*?) \(.*?${port_name} .*?,/ ) { print '$port_name = '; say $port_name; print 'cell name = '; say $1; } } __DATA__ .dout_sar ( dout_sar ) , .dcoc_status ( dcoc_status ) , .sdm_yout_i ( {sdm_yout_i[1] , n145 } ) , .sdm_yout_q ( sdm_yout_q ) ,