#!/usr/bin/perl use warnings; use strict; my $line = q{3,"2014-02-19 14:29:05","Extracted 1 Unfulfilled Reconciliation records into /opt/mysql/backup/recon/201312/input/UNFULFILLED_RECONCILIATION_20130225.CSV","URECONCILIATION"}; $line =~ m{ \s\S*?(?!\.CSV) # space delimited text filter \s(\S*?(?<=\.CSV)) # filename }x; print $1;