Bravo! That's the one I was looking for. I had a vague idea that it could be done within the regex, but I didn't know how to start.

Of course, I had to study pelre for a half an hour to understand what you'd done. But I learned 3 or 4 new things about Perl on the way. The neat thing is, I'd looked at those parts of perlre before. But I couldn't make heads or tails of them without your example.

Thanks!

throop