Hi, I am a beginner with regexp, and are trying to substitute specific occurrances of a value inside a reccurring tag (<rstate>), which can be found in different places and depthts in the file, hence the different if-statements below. The match statements correctly finds what I want, problem is how to substitute the $1 match with a new value. How can I do that? I've googled a lot, but haven't really been able to find the information I need (or didn't understand it). If you have an other way of achieving the result I need, I'd be happy to learn about it. My only concern is that the code should be readable.

if ($data =~ m/<section1>.*?<parameter>.*?<rstate>(.*?)<\/rstate>/s) {
    print "found first match! '$1'\n";
    #$data=~ s/<section1>.*?<parameter>.*?<rstate>(.*?)<\/rstate>/$new
+rstate/s;
    $data=~ s/$rstate/$newrstate/s;
}
if ($data =~ m/<section2>.*?<subsection>.*?<parameter>.*?<rstate>(.*?)
+<\/rstate>/s) {
    print "found second match! '$1'\n";
    $data=~ s/$rstate/$newrstate/s;
}
if ($data =~ m/<section2>.*?<subsection>.*?<subsection>.*?<parameter>.
+*?<rstate>(.*?)<\/rstate>/s) {
    print "found third match! '$1'\n";
    $data=~ s/$rstate/$newrstate/;
}
    # Print to output file
    print OUT $data;
[download]

The data file looks like this;

<map>
    <section1>
        <parameter>Some text</parameter>
        <rstate>CHANGE_THIS</rstate>
    </section1>
    <section2>
        <subsection>
            <parameter>dont change this</parameter>
            <rstate>CHANGE_THIS</rstate>
        </subsection>
        <subsection>
            <parameter>dont change this</parameter>
            <rstate>DONT CHANGE THIS</rstate>
        </subsection>        
        <subsection>
            <parameter>dont change this</parameter>
            <rstate>CHANGE_THIS</rstate>
        </subsection>
    </section2>
    <section3>
        <parameter>dont change this</parameter>
        <rstate>DONT CHANGE THIS</rstate>
    </section3>
</map>
[download]

thanks, Pontus

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