c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -le "my $s = 'this is the path/to/my/file what i want'; ;; my $rx_ptf = qr{ \w+ (?: / \w+)+ }xms; ;; print qq{matched: '$1'} if $s =~ m{ \b ($rx_ptf) \b }xms; " matched: 'path/to/my/file'