thanks robiticus !!

I used your suggestion with a minor change as I realised that my example line wasn't a 100% accurate example (oops)

if ($variable =~ /:\W{1,15}([0-9.]+)\W{1,15}([0-9.]+)/) {
    ($first, $second) = ($1, $2);
[download]

worked out how to effectively ignore the spaces between everything.

again many thanks for helping out a PERL newbie.