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/ [.\n]*? ^ $m [ ]* : [ ] (.*) $ [.\n]* /$1/xrm ; ;; print qq{[[$t]]}; " [[aaa : AAA bbb : BBB ccc : CCC ]] [[aaa : AAABBBccc : CCC ]]