s/$c$a/$c$b/g; or s/($c)$a/$1$b/g; #### use Benchmark; use vars qw/$a $b $c/; ($a, $b, $c) = qw/bar baz foo/; timethese(shift || 1, { lookbehind => sub { local $_ = "foobarquux"; s/(?<=$c)$a/$b/g }, chromatic => sub { local $_ = "foobarquux"; s/($c)$a/$1$b/g }, }); #### Benchmark: timing 500000 iterations of chromatic, lookbehind... chromatic: 15 wallclock secs (14.46 usr + 0.00 sys = 14.46 CPU) lookbehind: 13 wallclock secs (11.93 usr + 0.00 sys = 11.93 CPU)