rob dixon robdixongmxcom kenneth brun nielsen wrote need make conditional regular expression match eg code prints lines ones match make boolean test correct usrbinperl w open filehandle soatestsoa xi print match line n regular expression xi matches strings either start asterisk contain xi anywhere want match strings start either asterisk xi need xi looks messy simply noncapturing parentheses could use xi instead prefer wanted something different must let us know hth rob unsubscribe email beginnersunsubscribeperlorg additional commands email beginnershelpperlorg httplearnperlorg wed 06 aug 2008 133507 0100 newbie simple conditional regexp match