c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -le "use warnings; use strict; ;; my $s = qq{aaa : AAA\n} . qq{bbb : BBB\n} . qq}ccc : CCC\n} ; print qq{[[$s]]}; ;; my $m = 'bbb'; ;; my $t = $s =~ s/.*^$m *: (.*?)$.*/$1/rsm ; ;; print qq{[[$t]]}; " [[aaa : AAA bbb : BBB ccc : CCC ]] Use of uninitialized value $. in regexp compilation at -e line 1. [[BBB ccc : CCC ]]