#!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; my $TEXT= do { local $/; }; my $result; if( $TEXT =~ /(.*?abc)/g ) { $result= $1; while( $TEXT =~ /\G(\D+)([\d.\-]+)/g ) { $result .= $1 . "GOVALUE"; } $result .= substr( $TEXT, pos($TEXT) ); } print $result; __END__ abc(" 0.123511, 0.074997, 0.103143, 0.153955, 0.260586",\ " 0.068394, 0.082183, 0.110329, 0.161142, 0.267773",\ " 0.081887, 0.095677, 0.123822, 0.174635, 0.281266",\ " 0.111534, 0.125324, 0.153470, 0.204282, 0.310914",\ " 0.165731, 0.179521, 0.207666, 0.258479, 0.365110");