The code works, just not in my context, which is much the same as mine, it seems to be something with pulling the value from between the keywords and putting it in $1 but that's what I need in this case. Toying a bit more I ended up with this, which works for my need even if a bit clumsy, can anyone shed light on why it needs to be set in a new variable? The same digit check used in the primary check on $1 just won't work for me but this does.

if ($_ =~ /\something(.*)somethingelse/i){ 
    if (($1 >= 1) and ($1 <= 75)) { 
        $a = $1;
        if ($a =~ /^\d+$/){ ... }
    }
}
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