my @strings = ( qq/Win32_Account.Domain="ADDomain",Name="aduser1"/, qq/Win32_Account.Domain="foobar",Name=""/, qq/Win32_Account.Domain="ADDomain",Name="aduser2"/, ); for ( @strings ) { my $user = join( "\\", (split /"/)[1,3] ); $user = "Account Deleted" unless ( $user =~ /\S+\\\S+/ ); print "$user\n"; }