Oh, I understand what you were getting at. I still see it as somewhat obfuscatory though. I also don't really like it conceptually, as the s/// is actually doing the match from scratch (so it's not an atomic operation). It might still be the best way to go about this problem, I don't know: I don't remember ever having to have needed to implement such logic so I have no realistic example scenario to go by. I just can't help the feeling that there has to be a clearer way.