I didn't beat the best solution but I did tie it with a variation: Solution on the site: perl -pe's/:(?=[^(]*\))/-/g' Mine: perl -050pe's/:(?=.*\))/-/g' -- Rick Delaney rick.delaney@home.com ==== Want to unsubscribe from Fun With Perl? Well, if you insist... ==== Send email to <fwp-request@technofile.org> with message _body_ ==== unsubscribe