my $file = "regex.txt"; open FILE, "<", $file or die "Can't open $file: $!\n"; while(my $regex=){ my @rex = split(/,/,$regex); chomp($rex[0]); # $rex[0] is set to "([A-Za-z])\.[A-Za-z]" chomp($rex[1]); # $rex[1] is set to "$1" <--not sure how to get ([A-Za-z])group from $rex[0] to be set here. $rrow_test =~ s/$rex[0]/$rex[1]/ig; } # END while(my $regex=) close FILE;