if you are building for speed avoid $&, $' and $` as they make copies of the variable being manipulated (see Freidl's Mastering Regular Expressions ppgs. 273-278 and 281-282). "you could try changing your substitute to a match and either using parens with $1 $2 and so on or you could use $& with $` (back tick) and $' (forward tick)" Mark Meyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent by: To: "Perl-win32-users (E-mail)" [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> eState.com cc: Subject: RE: I need Faster way than s/bla/bla/i to remove string. Does tha t exist? 02/28/01 06:12 PM > Is there a faster way to remove the javascripts (of a HTML > file put in a > $string var) than mine? > It's for a Html search engine. > > Here are what I do: > > $string =~ s/.*<[\s]*script.*>.*<[\s]*\/script>//ie; > > It is because I do not want to find text which is inside the > javascripts. > i don't have time to work with this at the moment - but i can make a suggestion: why not change the goal from: "I want to get rid of everything in between a leading and ending marker" to... "i want to keep everything before and after a leading and ending marker" you could try changing your substitute to a match and either using parens with $1 $2 and so on or you could use $& with $` (back tick) and $' (forward tick) hth mark _______________________________________________ Perl-Win32-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://listserv.ActiveState.com/mailman/listinfo/perl-win32-users _______________________________________________ Perl-Win32-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://listserv.ActiveState.com/mailman/listinfo/perl-win32-users