#!/usr/bin/env perl -l use strict; use warnings; my @labsets = qw{ lab1_set1.txt lab1_set2.txt oops___should_not_be_in_this_list.txt lab2_set1.txt lab2_set2.txt lab3_set2.txt lab4_set1.txt lab99_set1.txt lab99_set2.txt lab100_set1.txt }; while (@labsets) { my ($set1, $set2) = splice @labsets, 0, 2; if (! defined $set2) { print 'NOT PAIRED: ', $set1; last; } if ($set1 =~ /^(lab\d+_set)([12])\.txt/) { if ($2 == 1 && $set2 eq $1 . '2.txt') { print "PAIRED: $set1 and $set2"; } else { print 'NOT PAIRED: ', $set1; unshift @labsets, $set2; } } else { print 'BAD FILENAME: ', $set1; unshift @labsets, $set2; } }