use strict; undef $/;#In order to read the whole file at once open(F,"test.txt"); my @matches = =~ m{ ( /\* .*? \*/) | ( \/\/[^\n]*) | " (?: [^"\\]* | \\. )* " | ' (?: [^'\\]* | \\. )* ' | . [^/"']* }xgs; @matches = grep {defined $_} @matches; #get rid of undefs my $linenum = 1; foreach my $match (@matches) { $slurpedfile =~ /\Q$match/; my $before = $`; $slurpedfile = $'; my $matched = $&; $linenum += $before =~ tr/\n/\n/; print "Line $linenum\t$match\n"; $linenum += $match =~ tr/\n/\n/; }