Regexp is a many spendored thing, however it is a bit arcane. Since your example has symbols in it things are a little harder. Especially since $ and * are wild cards in regexp. I use your example to illustrate with.

 $text = q"'$' and '***'";
 $text =~ /\$(.*)\*\*\*/;
 print $1;
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This yeilds: ' and ' The trick is to escape the $ and * with a \ (backslash).

The q in front of the quotes may look like a typo, but it saves me from having to use a lot of backslashes. Speaking of which, there is a way to not use so many backslashes in our pattern.

 $text =~ /\$(.*)\*{3}/;
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This has the same effect. The regexp is more compact as well. The {} allows me to say how many of the last character to match.

2001-03-11 Edited by Corion: Added CODE tags