A function to substitute parts of a string matching a regular expression with the result of a script called using the match as argument. Code and examples will be much more clear than my english: (new version more comfortable and faster) # regmap re string var script # substitute all the occurrences of 're' in 'string' with # the result of the evaluation of 'script'. Script is called # for every match with 'var' variable set to the matching string. # # Example: regmap {[0-9]+} "1 2 hello 3 4 world" x {expr {$x+1}} # Result: "2 3 hello 4 5 world" proc regmap {re string var script} { set submatches [lindex [regexp -about $re] 0] lappend varlist idx while {[incr submatches -1] >= 0} { lappend varlist _ } set res $string set indices [regexp -all -inline -indices $re $string] set delta 0 foreach $varlist $indices { foreach {start end} $idx break set substr [string range $string $start $end] uplevel [list set $var $substr] set subresult [uplevel $script] incr start $delta incr end $delta set res [string replace $res $start $end $subresult] incr delta [expr {[string length $subresult]-[string length $substr]}] } return $res } Note that you can use regsub and subst combined to get the same effect, but often it is less secure (against nontrusted inputs) and usually more tricky. The following is a [map] implementation with a similar interface, but supporting a variable number of input elements: # map list vars script # # Returns a list with elements created evaluating 'script' # with 'vars' set taking values from 'list'. # 'vars' is a list of variables, so the resulting list can # be shorter then the input list. # # Examples: # # map {1 2 3 4} x {expr {$x*$x}} ; => {1 4 9 16} # # map {1 2 3 4} {x y} {expr {$x+$y}} ; => {3 7} # proc map {list vars script} { set newlist {} set nvars [llength $vars] set nvarsLessOne [expr {$nvars-1}] set len [llength $list] for {set j 0} {$j < $len} {incr j $nvars} { set slice [lrange $list 0 $nvarsLessOne] set list [lrange $list $nvars end] uplevel [list foreach $vars $slice break] lappend newlist [uplevel $script] } return $newlist } Comments to [SS]