Per, > >> There are no spaces in the string, it's an email address.
An email address can legitimately contain a space, see RFC 2822, e.g. "some x user"@example.com > >> I did try using $1 on the right side of the s///, but it didn't work. Most weird. Which version of perl? Try this: $ perl -le '@a...@argv; s/^\s*(.*?)\s*$/$1/ for @a; print "/$_/" for @a' \ "x " " y" " z z " should produce: /x/ /y/ /z z/ > Well, as the \1 variation worked apart from the warning, I didn't bother > with going any further. I have a feeling the $1 might be getting > substituted first? so maybe I should escape it? Anyway, thanks for > your suggestion, it's much better. No escaping, the $1 should work as show. Mark
