c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -le "$_ = qq{xxx ekey=foo bar \n xyzzy}; ;; my (undef, $captured) = split(/ekey=(.+)/, $_); print qq{captured '$captured'}; ;; my ($bagged) = $_ =~ m{ ekey= ([^\n]+) }xms; print qq{ bagged '$bagged'}; " captured 'foo bar ' bagged 'foo bar '