use strict;
my $str = 'This little piggy went to market, \\textbf{smith1774}
This little \\textbf{ben1864} piggy stayed \\textbf{mueller2867} home,
This little piggy had roast beef';
my $regex = qr/\\textbf\{([^}]*)\}/p;
my $subst = '$1';
my $result = $str =~ s/$regex/$subst/rg;
print "The result of the substitution is' $result\n";
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for Perl, please visit: http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html