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$_ = '       blee blah    ';
s/\s*(.*?)\s*/$1/;
print "matched '$&'; retained '$1'; str is '$_'\n";

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matched ' '; retained ''; str is 'blee blah '
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```
s/^\s+//; 
s/\s+$//;
```

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[matt@blade8 matt]$ perl -MBenchmark -e '@list1 = @list2 = map { " "x 
+rand(100) . "some text" . " "x rand(100)  } 1 .. 100; timethese( 100_
+000, { single_regexp => sub { return map {  s/^\s*(.+?)\s*$/$1/; $_ }
+ @list1 }, dual_regexp => sub { return map { s/^\s+//; s/\s+$//; $_ }
+ @list2 }  } ); '
Benchmark: timing 100000 iterations of single_regexp, dual_regexp...
   single_regexp: 56 wallclock secs (56.04 usr +  0.00 sys = 56.04 CPU
+) @ 1784.44/s (n=100000)
   dual_regexp: 17 wallclock secs (18.63 usr +  0.00 sys = 18.63 CPU) 
+@ 5367.69/s (n=100000)