#! /usr/bin/perl -w use strict; use warnings; my @data; while () { while (/(\d+\.\.\d+)/g) { push @data, $1; } } print "@data\n"; __DATA__ This is a file that contains lines like this 12..13 13..14 14..15 15..1 15..2 14..3 13..16 that we want to extract. 16..4 16..17 17..5 17..18 18..6 18..7 12..19 19..20 20..8 20..10 19..9 12..11 That was another one