c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -le "my $text = 'text with a <%VAR%> and <%FOO%> to interpolate <%OOPS%>'; print qq{'$text'}; ;; my $vars = { 'VAR' => 'Value Taken From A Data Structure', 'FOO' => 'Another One', }; ;; my $rx_pre = qr{ <% }xms; my $rx_post = qr{ %> }xms; ;; my ($rx_var) = map qr{ $_ }xms, join '|', map quotemeta, reverse sort keys %$vars ; print 'regex: ', $rx_var; ;; $text =~ s{ $rx_pre ($rx_var) $rx_post }{$vars->{$1}}xmsg; print qq{'$text'}; ;; log_unknown(\$text, $1, $-[1]) while $text =~ m{ ($rx_pre .*? $rx_post) }xmsg; ;; ;; sub log_unknown { my ($sr_text, $unknown_tag, $offset) = @_; ;; print qq{unable to interpolate '$unknown_tag' at offset $offset} } " 'text with a <%VAR%> and <%FOO%> to interpolate <%OOPS%>' regex: (?msx-i: VAR|FOO ) 'text with a Value Taken From A Data Structure and Another One to interpolate <%OOPS%>' unable to interpolate '<%OOPS%>' at offset 77