Any roboust solution would require a lot more knowledge of the rules that the string conforms too. Can you express, in English, which elements that the string can be made up of? Most likely you'll describe a pattern ("skip the first four words, ignore the first char, take the next two, ..."), and then it's just a matter of translating it into regexes, which we can help you with.

Expressing the problem in plain English can be quite good.

Related documents:

• perlrequick	- Perl regular expressions quick start
• perlretut	- Perl regular expressions tutorial
• perlre	- Perl regular expressions
• perlreref	- Perl regular expressions reference

ihb