On Tue, May 02, 2000 at 03:24:54PM -0400, Bill Jones wrote: > Is there away to combine these? > > /^[ ]*[+-]?\d+[ ]*$/; > > /^[ ]*[+-]?\d*\.?\d*([eE][+-]?\d+)?[ ]*$/; Something like this? /^ *[+-]?(?:\d+\.?\d*|\.\d+)(?:[eE][+-]?\d+)? *$/; I went for the easy solution that uses alternation. Ronald ==== Want to unsubscribe from Fun With Perl? Well, if you insist... ==== Send email to <fwp-request@technofile.org> with message _body_ ==== unsubscribe