Perl> my $text = "[Part1,Part1_XX,Part2],[Part3,Part3_XX],[Part4, Part5],[Part6]"; [Part1,Part1_XX,Part2],[Part3,Part3_XX],[Part4, Part5],[Part6] Perl> my @data = map { s/[^,]+_XX//g; s/^,|,$//g; s/,,/,/g; $_ } [!] compilation error: syntax error at (eval 4) line 4, at EOF