c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -le "my $s = qq{aaa : AAA\n} . qq{bbb : BBB\n} . qq{ccc : CCC\n} ; print qq{[[$s]]}; ;; my $m = qr{ bbb }xms; ;; my $t = $s =~ s{ .* ^ $m [ ]* : [ ] ([^\n]*) $ .* }{$1}xmsr; ;; print qq{[[$t]]}; " [[aaa : AAA bbb : BBB ccc : CCC ]] [[BBB]]