Thank you all for your efforts. I see I should have been clearer about what I want. Here goes.

The script I'm writing will process about 180,000 lines of a text file, each of which is the title of work of music. The data is a mess-- there's no consistency at all. My job is to put it into a consistent format.

To take out the instrument type, I used this regex: 
    if ( $work =~ / (For [^,^\(^#^-]+)/ )
...

[download]
...to grab anything between the word "For" and a comma, open parenth pound sign, or hyphen. No problem. But I saw that some works have the text "Transcribed, For" OR "Arranged, For". In those cases, I want to grab the word "Transcribed" OR "Arranged" as well.

state-o-dis-array's solution would seem work, but doesn't. It actually doesn't even catch a simple example like the first below:

INPUT:
Tirana Alla Spagnola (Rossinizzatta), For Soprano & Piano (Péchés De Vieillesse, Book 1), Qr Iv/30
À La Chapelle Sixtine, Transcribed, For Orchestra, S 360 (Lw G26)
All Through The Night, Traditional Welsh Song Arranged, For Mixed Voices


DESIRED POST-REGEX OUTPUT:
Tirana Alla Spagnola (Rossinizzatta), (Péchés De Vieillesse, Book 1), Qr Iv/30
À La Chapelle Sixtine, S 360 (Lw G26)
All Through The Night, Traditional Welsh Song


(NOTE that I'm saving the instrument type in another variable, but that's not the problem.) To answer abualiga's question, I need the '?' non-greedy quantifier because not every line will have "Transcribed" or "Arranged" in it. I realize I could use a few different regex's connected with the OR operator '||', but I have so many different cases that it starts getting very long and tedious. It may come to that, though.

To answer ww and space_monk, I think I need to have the '\b' word boundaries in there so I can use the '?'.

In reply to Re: Try this by jeffrgsf
in thread Regex word options by jeffrgsf

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