note davido <p><c>*</c> isn't a "wildcard" for Perl regular expressions. Your regex is saying "match and capture 'the' plus zero or more 'r' characters". Consequently, the first 'the' matches.</p> <p>Try using <c>s/(ther.*)\b/.......</c>, for example. "Dot" (.) is the wildcard metacharacter; it matches anything except for a newline, unless you ask Perl to allow it to match the newline too.</p> <p><b>Update: </b>Just in case anyone stumbles across this thread while searching for an answer:</p> <p>Reading [doc://perlrequick] is a great quick-start to regular expression syntax. Follow it up with [doc://perlretut], and then [doc://perlre]. Additional useful resources include [doc://perlop], [doc://perlvar], [doc://perlrecharclass], [doc://perluniprops]. But perlrequick is about a half hour of reading for a 70% better understanding of regexes. Each additional document adds a few extra percentage points of knowledge to the foundation that perlrequick builds. ...and of course for the 1000% bonus, "Mastering Regular Expressions" (O'Reilly).</p> <div class="pmsig"><div class="pmsig-281137"> <br /><p>Dave</p> </div></div> 1006098 1006098