In message <B534A3C1.100FC%bill@fccj.org>, Bill Jones writes: : Is there away to combine these? : : /^[ ]*[+-]?\d+[ ]*$/; : : /^[ ]*[+-]?\d*\.?\d*([eE][+-]?\d+)?[ ]*$/; Have you looked at the code in Math::BigInt? Greg ==== Want to unsubscribe from Fun With Perl? Well, if you insist... ==== Send email to <fwp-request@technofile.org> with message _body_ ==== unsubscribe