>perl -wMstrict -le "my @a = qw(foobar barfoo foobaz bar foobor); my @c = grep {s/fo(ob.).+/$1/} @a; ;; printf qq{'$_' } for @c; print qq{\n}; printf qq{'$_' } for @a; " 'oba' 'oba' 'obo' 'oba' 'barfoo' 'oba' 'bar' 'obo'