my $s='Tue Feb 8 11:11:11 2005: blah blah blah'; my $regex=createRegEx('Tue','Feb','8','2005'); findstring($s); sub findstring($) { my $line=shift; print "found\n" if $line=~/$regex/; } sub createRegEx($$$$) { my ($wday,$mon,$mday,$year)=@_; my $regex="^$wday $mon\s+$mday \d{2}:\d{2}:\d{2} $year:"; return(qr($regex)); }